Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2018 OGE Energy Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we will have a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require assistance during today's conference, please press star then zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded for replay purposes. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to your host, Todd Tidwell. Please go ahead.
Thank you, [Haley]. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to OGE Energy Corp's fourth quarter 2018 earnings call. I'm Todd Tidwell, Director of Investor Relations, and with me today I have Sean Trauschke, Chairman, President, and CEO of OGE Energy Corp, and Steve Merrill, CFO of OGE Energy Corp. In terms of the call today, we will first hear from Sean, followed by an explanation from Steve of year-end and fourth quarter results. Finally, as always, we will answer your questions. I would like to remind you that this conference is being webcast, and you may follow along on our website at ogeenergy.com. In addition, the conference call and accompanying slides will be archived following the call on that same website. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to direct your attention to the safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements.
This is an SEC requirement for financial statements and simply states that we cannot guarantee forward-looking financial results, this is our best estimate to date. I would also like to remind you that there is a Regulation G reconciliation for gross margin in the appendix. I will now turn the call over to Sean for his opening comments. Sean?
Thank you, Todd, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Earlier this morning, we reported 2018 consolidated earnings of $2.12 per share, compared to $1.92 for 2017 net of tax reform. Steve will discuss the details of full-year earnings and the fourth quarter in a moment, I'd like to discuss this year's accomplishments. Looking back, I believe that 2018 will be regarded as one of the most accomplished years in our 117-year history. I'm most proud of our safety performance, finishing number 1 in the Southeastern Electric Exchange and shattering our safety records set the previous two years. Our mission to deliver safe, reliable and affordable energy to our customers is intact. In March, we brought our 10-megawatt solar farm online in Covington. The completion of the Mustang Energy Center followed in April.
We also installed scrubbers on two coal-fired units at Sooner and converted two units from coal to natural gas at Muskogee. The Mustang and Sooner projects were both of substantial scale, requiring numerous contractors, hundreds of workers, and millions of work hours. That both projects were completed on time, significantly under budget, and with no lost time injuries, is a testament to the hard work and commitment of all involved. As we look at our entire fleet, our overall plant emissions are significantly lower from 2005 levels. Sulfur dioxide emissions are nearly 90% lower, nitrogen oxide emissions are 75% lower, and CO2 is down by 40%. We're not done. We fully expect a CO2 reduction of 50% by 2030. In December, we announced our intention to acquire the Shady Point plant in southeast Oklahoma and the Oklahoma CoGen plant in Oklahoma City.
The purchase price is approximately $53 million for over 500 megawatts of capacity. This will replace capacity currently provided by costly, federally mandated power purchase contracts. The acquisitions are expected to save customers tens of millions of dollars per year and will help mitigate the negative economic impact Shady Point's closure would have had in one of the state's more challenged regions. In 2018, we drove continued improvement in customer reliability and added another year of strong performance from our fleet. Our assets continued to perform at high levels with improvements in both EFORd and SAIDI. We see improvement in our already high customer satisfaction scores continuing to move the needle in the right direction for our customers. Another enhancement to the customer alerts platform including billing notifications and payment confirmations by text, email, or voice, and now even a text-to-pay option.
In 2018, our crews were once again called to assist in restoration efforts in Puerto Rico and North Carolina. We were honored to receive two EEI Emergency Assistance Awards for these efforts. The first phase of our grid modernization investment is nearing completion in Arkansas. This phase impacts more than 22,000 customers and includes 14 total circuits, 220 miles of distribution circuits, the replacement of 250 distribution transformers. The completed circuits are already exceeding our performance expectations. The technology assets installed since midsummer have significantly improved the customer experience. Project construction on Arkansas' second phase of this grid modernization work is set to begin in April. On the regulatory front, we reached a settlement midyear that provided for full recovery of our Mustang investment while supporting regional energy grid reliability and resiliency.
The agreement also ensured Oklahoma customers received the timely benefit of tax savings. In October, we made our first Arkansas formula rate filing and earlier this month, reached a settlement with parties. Following commission approval, new rates will begin in Arkansas April 1st. In December, we made a pre-approval filing in Oklahoma for the Shady Point and Oklahoma CoGen plant. We also filed a rate review in Oklahoma for the recovery of our investments in the Sooner and Muskogee projects. In those filings, we are seeking a 9.9% ROE and a change in depreciation rates along with additional dismantlement and accruals for aging assets. Fortunately, the termination of the costly cogen capacity payments will help minimize the impact to customers. The total rate change is approximately $78 million. I'm optimistic the order will be timely as we've seen with recent rulings in the state.
All of these accomplishments were made while keeping our rates 31% below the national average. By any measure, 2018 was an outstanding year. On to Enable, Steve and I could not be more proud of the management team and employees that continue to create value there. They exceeded guidance projections for EBITDA, DCF, net income, and distribution coverage. Gathered volumes have increased for 12 straight quarters, and Enable currently has 54 rigs drilling on its system, highlighting their prime acreage dedications in the SCOOP and STACK areas. In 2018, Enable deployed capital, which significantly expanded the business portfolio and announced the Gulf Run project with its 20-year commitment with Golden Pass LNG. Finally, Enable distributions to OGE were $141 million for the year. By the end of this year, we will have received over $1 billion in cash distributions from Enable since inception.
Before turning the call over to Steve, I want to reiterate that our priority is to invest in our service territories. Operating on the consistent model of investing with real customer benefits and widening the economic competitive advantage our communities have with our rates 31% below the national average. In fact, since 2011, we've invested approximately $5.5 billion in the utility, and our rates are actually lower today. We have consistently seen load growth in the 1% range, even with the energy efficiency gains. We are watching, and we continue to watch population growth, economic development successes, and other positive trends which could push load growth higher. Obviously, this is good for our communities and good for our company. Our plans this year are to complete the two Oklahoma filings, finalize approval of the Arkansas settlement and our formula rate filing, continue to receive distributions from Enable.
As these outcomes are realized, we will further refine our investment and dividend plans. We've built a strong company and a company for the long term. There will be challenges along the way, but let me be clear. We will continue to execute, we will continue to learn, and we will continue to grow for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. The actions we've taken with our fleet, with our rates, debt portfolio, and the positive outcomes we've delivered for our customers, they all point to a model of long-term success. Thank you, and I'll now turn the call over to Steve to review our financial results for the quarter and for the full year 2018. Steve?
Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everyone. For the fourth quarter, we've reported net income of $55 million, or $0.27 per share, as compared to net income of $295 million or $1.48 per share in 2017. You will recall in the fourth quarter of 2017, as a result of tax reform, there was a $1.18 per share gain due to the remeasurement of deferred taxes at the natural gas midstream business. The contribution by business unit on a comparative basis is listed on the slide. For the full year 2018, we reported earnings of $426 million, or $2.12 per share, as compared to net income of $619 million or $3.10 per share in 2017. The 2018 results for the holding company are nearly flat with 2017. We anticipate in 2019 the loss to be between $0.00 and $0.02.
In 2017, tax reform accounted for $235 million or an additional $1.18 per share resulting from our investment in Enable. At OGE, net income for the quarter was $21 million, or $0.10 per share, as compared to net income of $42 million or $0.21 per share in 2017. For the quarter, gross margin decreased approximately $18 million, in part due to the impacts of tax reform on rates. O&M was essentially flat for the quarter. Depreciation expense increased by approximately $5 million for the quarter due to additional plant and service, including the Mustang CTs, Covington Solar Farm, and the Windspeed II line. Net other income decreased approximately $12 million due to the lower AFUDC and tax gross up related to the completion of the Mustang Energy Center and environmental projects.
Finally, income tax expense decreased approximately $18 million, primarily due to the decrease in the federal tax rate. Now turning to the full year at OGE, net income for the year was $328 million or $1.64 per share as compared to net income of $306 million or $1.53 per share in 2017. Gross margin for 2018 increased $14 million, which I'll discuss on the next slide. Looking at the key drivers for the year, they're very similar to the quarter. Increased depreciation and lower AFUDC and net other income are a result of new assets being placed in the service, and income tax expense decreased due in part to the decrease in the federal tax rate. Turning to 2018 gross margin, utility margins increased approximately $14 million in 2018 compared to 2017.
Margin was higher due to the following: warmer summer weather translated into an increase of $43 million as compared to 2017. Compared to normal, weather increased margin by nearly $18 million. New customer growth contributed approximately $8 million. We added 7,500 customers over the past year, growing near our historical 1%. Demand revenues and industrial and oilfield sales combined increased margin by nearly $13 million for the year. Partially offsetting these increases was the impact of tax reform on customer rates, which were offset by lower income tax expense. OGE Energy Holdings received cash distributions from Enable Midstream of approximately $141 million and contributed earnings of $109 million, or $0.54 per share, compared to $324 million, or $1.62 per share in 2017. The Enable board approved a limited partner distribution of $0.318 per unit that will be paid February 26th. 2018 was another exceptional year for Enable.
Record operational performance with the highest natural gas gathered, natural gas processed, and crude oil and condensate gathered volumes. On the financial side, they achieved higher revenues, net income, gross margin, adjusted EBITDA, and distributable cash flow for the year compared to 2017. They also recently announced they have entered into a $1 billion, three-year term loan facility that significantly enhances their liquidity and financial flexibility. The Enable management team continues to grow the business with cost discipline and capital efficiencies. They ended the year with a strong balance sheet and a distribution coverage of 1.38 times. The distribution coverage funded approximately 34% of the year's organic expansion capital. They've reaffirmed their 2019 outlook. Turning to 2019 guidance at the utility and assuming normal weather, we project earnings per share to be between $1.55 and $1.62 per share.
For the midstream business, we are projecting earnings contribution to be between $0.52 and $0.58 per share. We are projecting consolidated earnings between $2.05 and $2.20 per share. Looking further into the utility outlook, you can see the detailed assumptions on the slide. A few key points I want to make relative to 2019 guidance are that we anticipate new rates in Arkansas by April 1st and in Oklahoma by July 1st. We assume our historical growth rate of 1% and expect O&M to increase less than 1% from 2018 actual results. It is also important to remember that OG&E has significant seasonality in its earnings and typically shows the majority of earnings in the second and third quarters due to the seasonal nature of air conditioning demand. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now open to call to your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the question queue at any time, please press the pound key. Once your question has been stated, we ask that you please place your line on mute to prevent any background noise. Our first question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning. This is actually Richard Ciciarelli here for Julien.
Hey, Richie. Good morning. How are you today?
Doing well. Just wanted to touch base on your grid modernization program in Oklahoma. It seems like stakeholders might be open to performance-based rates, given some of the feedback to your in-state peers' rate case. It's less clear about actual riders or trackers will be granted. I'm just wondering how the education process is going around a grid mod request.
Yeah. A good question. Couple things going on there. We have a great program underway in Arkansas that's achieving, really exceeding our expectations. We're going to conclude that first phase here next month, and we're going to share that with Oklahoma, kind of the real customer benefits that we're seeing. That'll be a real good example of what we're going to do there. At the same time, we don't want to get out in front of our skis. We want to make sure that we get these two Oklahoma filings resolved. We're making a concerted effort to keep our filings very simple and straightforward and really around singular issues. While we'll begin some education process, we're not going to begin making any filings until we get the existing ones resolved. Does that help?
That helps. That makes a lot of sense. Just in terms of, it looks like some of the capital in your plan shifted from 2021 to some of the outer years. What's some of the moving pieces going on there, and how do you execute kind of within the plan?
Sure. That's really just true up as we have more granularity into our actual plans on how we'll spend, especially grid mod and do maintenance on our distribution system. What you can really expect is a pretty consistent around $600 million a year in each of the years. Each year, that's going to true up a little bit as we just have more clarity.
Got it. Assuming, not trying to put the cart before the horse, but assuming you could be successful in a grid mod request, is $600 million still kind of the full run rate level?
Sure. That's a very comfortable rate. If the question is could it be higher or lower? Yeah. I think it's up to us to balance that and make sure that we achieve all the benefits.
All right, great. Thank you. That's all I had.
Thank you. Have a good day.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Paul Ridzon of KeyBank. Your line is now open.
Morning, Sean and Steve.
Morning.
Good morning.
It looks like midstream did a little better than the top end of guidance. What drove that?
Part of that is they did have mark-to-market gains on their hedging. I think that was around $26 million or so that drove it up just a bit.
Okay. What was the impact of weather in the quarter versus normal?
Weather for the quarter versus normal was about $0.02 higher, about $6 million.
Do you have it versus 2017?
It was about $0.01. Just under $3 million.
Positive, yes.
Okay. What's driving the outlook for lower holding company losses for 2019?
We just had some noise associated with tax reform. Our deferred comp program expenses actually go there. We can't invest in OGE stock in that, we have to invest in an index. When our stock overperforms, that creates a loss at the holding company. It was actually a good news situation that we have those expenses. Our stock actually outperformed the index.
Got it. Then lastly, how's your outreach with the parties going regarding what I thought was a punitive depreciation outcome in the last rate case or two rate cases ago?
Yeah. You saw that there was much more support for correcting that in the last Case. It didn't make its way through the settlement, there were parties, in particular, the staff that was supportive of our depreciation position. My view on that is I think everyone recognizes what needs to happen there. Paul, I'm not anticipating that we're going to flip it all back all in one Case, but I think we are going to make progress on that and incrementally get those depreciation rates back to where they need to be.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks. See you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Charles Fishman of Morningstar Research. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning.
I've lost track of what happened to the committee formed in Oklahoma, I think it was a select committee, special committee, to evaluate the structure of the OCC. Did that ever issue its final report?
They did. They issued their final report in middle of November. There were a number of recommendations really around I would characterize it as like we anticipated, that they were opportunities for how everyone could kind of work together and streamline the operations and become more efficient. There weren't any strong recommendations on the structure of the commission in terms of whether there ought to be more or fewer commissioners, whether they ought to be appointed or elected. They didn't go down that path. The one interesting point that came out of there, though, that there was a recommendation as it relates to allowing the commissioners to talk to one another outside of a called meeting that fell under the open meetings request. The ability for the commissioners to engage one another and build relationship was one of the recommendations, and we certainly support that.
Okay. With respect to what you call streamline riders, whatever you want to call it, they really didn't address that, which would've helped the visibility of how you're going to do the grid modernization, correct?
You're right. There was no linkage there, that's correct.
Okay. As I understood it.
Charles, just so we're clear, there was no statutory restriction for them to grant riders or anything like that. The Commission has done that in the past. We have riders today. There's no issue there with regards to their ability to grant riders.
Based on the answer to a previous question, your strategy is to let those get settled mid-year, and then really hit this hard of how you're going to address recovery on grid modernization. Do I understand that correctly?
I think that's a very fair assessment. That being said, we're talking and educating people on what's coming up. As far as regulatory filings, we're going to keep these very straightforward, one at a time.
I suspect that your story would be, look at our rates, look at what happened in Arkansas when we had a formula rate mechanism. That's the message you'll be sending?
That's exactly right. We may call you to be a witness too, Charles. That was well done.
Okay. Well, thank you. That's the only thing I had.
Okay, thanks. Have a good day.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Greg Reese of Sentinus. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
Hey, Greg. Good morning.
Morning, congrats on a good report.
Good.
Two quick questions. Just wanted to see the utility tax rates ticking down a little bit in 2019. Just wanted to see what was driving that.
Surely. There's really three main drivers. The largest of which is just federal wind tax credits. We've got some investment tax credits that impact that. Then you just got the impact of tax reform. As we're amortizing the ADIT give back, that brings down our net effective tax rate.
How much ADIT is going back? I know there's a protected and unprotected piece. Just wanted to see if you had.
Yeah, for 2019, that'll be about $38 million.
For both protected and unprotected?
Yes. That's all in at this point.
Got you. Over how many years is that going to be going back?
It's about 30 years.
30 years. Okay.
It changes. It's all tied to the asset lives, so that number will change every year, but that's where it is for 2019.
Got you. Somewhere in the $30-odd million per year is a good number to use for that?
It ebbs and flows. It can be a little less than that at times, around $30 million is probably not a bad number.
Okay. What's the cash tax rate on Enable distributions?
We don't really look at it that way because we're just a corporate taxpayer, it all just goes into OGE's bucket.
Okay. Got you. The statutory book rate's somewhere in the 25% range?
Yeah. That's right. That's correct.
Got you. One last one. What's 2018 year-end rate base across the company?
That number is about six and a half billion.
Okay. Perfect. That is all I had. Appreciate it, guys.
Thanks, Greg.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Vidula Murty of Avon Capital. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning, Sean.
Hey, good morning, Vidula. How have you been? I haven't talked to you in a while.
I'm doing fine. Thank you very much.
Good.
A couple of things. One, for 2018, what was the earned ROEs in the regulated jurisdictions for Oklahoma and Arkansas?
Okay. In Oklahoma, we're very close to our allowed return. Obviously, we had probably in the 9% range. Obviously, we had two big assets coming into service. We're a little bit below that'll all get trued up. Arkansas, right there at the allowed.
Okay. If you can remind me, in terms of Enable, beyond the distribution you get on your shares and the cash flow you get for your general partnership ownership, what else causes variability in terms of income recognition from Enable?
We just recognize our proportional share of the net income to the common unit holders. The variability would be just the variability in the business. Commodity exposure, however, I'll mention 97% of their margin is either fee-based or hedged. You do have exposure to volume swings. What they do to help mitigate that is they have a hedging program, but you will have mark-to-market adjustments associated with that. Those are the key variables.
Okay. When I was taking a look at least what some of Wall Street has as an outlook, it's quite variable, but it seems based on, I guess, commodity forecasts and things of that nature. Until that big pipeline, I think you referenced in your script, actually comes into service, it appears that underlying growth, absent tailwinds of commodity and activity, is fairly modest.
They've done a good job there of balancing the business. Since we formed Enable, we've been focused on the cash distributions to our company, and even in some very significant downturns in the commodity market, the cash flow to our company has been stable. I think that's a really good thing.
No, I certainly appreciate that. I guess in terms of the utilities going forward here, if we get to $600 million of CapEx, which is higher than what you have in the slide deck here on an ongoing basis, it appears that the rate base growth in aggregate is maybe about 4.5%, negative DD&A. Usually, the earnings growth is probably something close to that, maybe modestly less than that over a period of time. Is that a fair characterization?
Yeah. I think our stated guidance around earnings growth rate to utilities, 4%-6%, and we're very comfortable with that.
Okay. I guess in the past, you've talked about once you get through this rate case at the end of the year, once you've, as Eric calls it, 10% dividend growth for 2019, you'll establish a dividend policy and basically, I guess, lack of a better term, capital allocation policy at some point towards the end of this year. Can you remind me again what you might be thinking about? You've in the past referenced a possibility of stock buybacks as part of capital allocation as well, and also maybe current thoughts in terms of M&A.
Yeah. What we said is we certainly want to get through the two Oklahoma filings. We want to see the finalization of the Arkansas formula rate implementation, April 1st. You mentioned Enable there. We're certainly monitoring Enable going forward to see what's going on there in terms of future distributions. You're exactly right. We made a five-year commitment to grow the dividend 10% a year for five years through the end of 2019. We're going to watch those mile markers I just mentioned. We're going to go through that. Our focus there is to grow. Our focus there is to create a real return proposition for our shareholders. Line of sight and regulatory recovery is important to us, and we want to make sure we have that before we get too far out over our skis on commitments.
Certainly, we have the opportunity around the dividend. We do intend to grow the earnings of the company and the dividends of the company. I think we're going to have a very good return proposition.
Okay.
I think I'll just leave it at that.
One last thing, if you could. I guess, when you think about what would be the objective payout ratio over the extended period of time after you come to your conclusions, do you have a range you're working with to figure out how the pieces fit?
Yeah. No, I'm not focused as much on a payout ratio. We're unique in that we have a source of cash flow coming out of Enable that certainly we value tremendously. We think there's a lot of upside there because of our IDR ownership as well. The way we're thinking about it is in terms of a return proposition between dividends and earnings, and we're certainly going to be cognizant of what the market is recognizing and paying for. No, we don't have a payout ratio guideline per se. I will tell you, we're not anticipating or not expecting and would not be interested in something that was 90-plus % payout either, though. It's kind of hard to grow when your payout ratio is that high. Nevertheless, we're focused on return proposition.
Okay, one last question. I apologize. You mentioned the IDR. What is the annual cash flow you receive associated with your GP interest?
Well, today, they are not in the IDR splits. That is zero today.
Okay.
Going forward, we have 60% of the IDRs.
Okay. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Shar Pourreza of Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. It's actually Constantine here for Shar. A lot of questions have been answered. I just wanted to tick and tie a couple of numbers, but I saw that the actual sales stats have been pretty robust for this year due to weather and the heating degree days and whatnot. Can you comment on kind of the underlying normalized load growth that you're seeing in the area?
We continue to see 1%, and that's really overcoming a lot of what we see on the residential side in terms of energy efficiency pickups that we've been helping to promote. The economy's robust, and we are watching very closely some of the local economic forecasts around population growth and things like that. We've had a number of economic development successes that we're very involved in. We're watching these indicators in terms of whether load growth actually could be higher in the future.
Okay. That answers that. Another one around kind of looking at some of the operating stats for fuel costs per kilowatt hour. I've seen that the trend's been coming down, including purchase power, the number seems like it could further mitigate some of the rate increases.
Yeah. I think that is right on point.
Do you see a timeline for how that goes? Is there any specific purchase power contracts that are rolling off except for the one that's obviously you're in the process of the acquisition?
Yeah. That one you're mentioning about, that's going to reduce cost to customers significantly. We are seeing that benefit to customers because of our fuel expense. Certainly not having as many purchased obligations helps, too. That's a fixed obligation. That certainly helps us. The other thing that I think is really important, you hear this phrase a lot about fuel diversity, our fleet being positioned the way it is, we're able to satisfy our customers and keep our rates low and remove that volatility where we're not totally wed to particular weather, the weather environment or gas prices or anything like that.
Right. I guess just one short follow-up to that. Is there any more contracts in the 2019, 2020 timeframe that you see rolling off or?
None that have a roll-off date defined in the near term.
Okay. Yeah, thanks. That answers it for me.
Sure.
Thank you. We do have a follow-up question from Paul Ridzon of KeyBank. Your line is now open.
I think Enable had some capacity additions that kind of helped the back end of the year. When did those come online?
I think you're talking about Wildcat. I don't remember the exact date when that came online, but they did come on in 2018. The Case project, Wildcat. They did the Velocity acquisitions that they added to their crude oil system. Off the top of my head, I do not remember the exact in-service dates of those.
Okay. I'll circle back. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Sean Trauschke for any closing remarks.
Thank you, [Haley], and thank you all for your interest and participation today. Should you have any follow-up questions on time in case, we are certainly available to answer those, and have a great day.