Good day, everyone. My name is Kellyanne. I'll be your Conference Operator for today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the PG&E Management Update Call. Today's conference is being recorded. All line
s have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jonathan Arnold, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With us today, we have Patti Poppe, Chief Executive Officer; Chris Foster, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Thomas Webb, our Senior Advisor; and Carolyn Burke, our newly elected EVP of Finance. Please note we have scheduled 30 minutes for this call. We ask you to limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Patti Poppe.
Thank you, Jonathan, let me please add my thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon on such short notice. As you may have seen in our press release and our 8-K filing, I'm pleased and honored to be making two announcements today. First, Carolyn Burke has joined us as our new EVP of Finance. Carolyn is a highly skilled financial professional with deep hands-on experience of driving key financial performance and implementing enterprise-wide process improvement and culture change. She's also done this twice before at companies emerging from bankruptcy. These are exactly the kind of skills we need to be leveraged today at PG&E as we move further into the next phase of our journey to deliver the consistent operating and financial performance for our customers and our investors that you can rightly expect from us.
Second, on May fourth, Carolyn will replace Chris Foster as CFO. I'm sure nobody on this call needs me to remind them that Chris has played a huge role navigating the company through Chapter 11, establishment of the critical AB 1054 framework, and setting us up on the strong recovery path we are on today. Chris is a very effective communicator, a sharp policy thinker, as well as being an empathetic and respected leader. We will miss him as he sets off on a new journey with CenterPoint Energy, where he'll be rejoining Jason Wells, PG&E's previous CFO, and become their CFO. While it's difficult to see Chris go, we are excited for him, and his departure presents us with an opportunity to bring on another exceptional new leader onto our team.
I'm grateful that Chris Foster has graciously agreed to stay with us through the first quarter earnings call on May 4th. This allows us the flexibility for a healthy transition period. Carolyn Burke will join us along with Chris Foster in most of our upcoming investor relations events. For many of you, the first real opportunity to spend quality time with Carolyn Burke may be at our Investor Day in California, which I'll remind you is on May 24th in the Bay Area, followed by site visits in and around Napa County on May 25th. We're all excited about the agenda we have in store for you at this event, with a focus on giving you plenty of opportunities to see and hear for yourselves about the progress we're making, including from other key stakeholders.
I'd like to offer you a little bit more background and help you see why Carolyn was the obvious choice to take over the finance leadership role from Chris. First, we were fortunate to have brought Carolyn in as a senior advisor to Chris and our entire finance organization in January. As such, Carolyn has been working very closely with the PG&E leadership team already for a couple months now. She's been bringing her finance, organizational, and process-oriented improvement skill set to bear, doing great work as we make the transition from bankruptcy recovery mode to more of a steady state utility with a balanced growth profile. The same top-to-bottom transition we have brought to bear on our critical physical and wildfire risk mitigation efforts is now being deployed more widely across the whole PG&E organization.
Our finance team is absolutely core to what we're doing here, and with Carolyn's leadership, I feel confident we can advance the core processes necessary to measure up with the very best in the industry. You heard me talk about waste elimination on our recent earnings call. As I said then, waste elimination is our fifth play from the Lean Management Playbook and a big focus for all of us at PG&E in 2023. Carolyn has extremely relevant prior experience in exactly these areas, and you might be interested to know that she was the primary architect of the PRIDE improvement programs, which were a hallmark program at Dynegy Inc., where our chairman, Bob Flexon, was CEO and which Carolyn will touch on more in her remarks in just a few moments.
Carolyn and Chris will work side by side over the next couple of months, ensuring a smooth transition and allowing us to continue with the critical business of driving down both physical and financial risks, improving our customers' experience, and delivering on our earnings per share growth target of at least 10% in 2023. As you know, we have a strong financial plan in place, and to be very clear, there is no change to our plans laid out on the fourth quarter earnings call, just sound execution underway. With that said, we're looking forward to seeing many of you out in California in May. Now I'll hand it over to Chris for a few words.
Thank you, Patti. Good afternoon, everyone. This is certainly an exciting time for me personally and definitely not an easy decision after spending the last past 11 plus years as part of the PG&E team. I've had many great experiences along the way in the journey through Chapter 11 and out the other side gave me the opportunity to work with many fantastic people, both inside the company and among the financial community. More recently, I've gotten to see up close the deep cultural transition going on at PG&E under Patti's leadership, which should give you all great confidence in the company's continued progress. Coupled with that, the tools to execute the plan using the lean operating system mean we have the right structure in place for years to come.
While the new opportunity I'm going to is exciting, leaving my PG&E family is not easy, but I know that the company has a first-class team in place and is absolutely on the right path to continue delivering the improved operating and financial performance which customers and investors deserve. I've also had the opportunity to see what Carolyn can do in the month we've spent together while she's been in the advisory role. She's been a key partner for me recently, and there's no doubt in my mind that she is going to hit the ground running. I know from firsthand experience that she's the right person to continue leading our finance organization through the enterprise-wide cultural change, which is already delivering essential improvements, as you've been seeing. With that, I'll hand it over to Carolyn for a few words before Patti wraps up and we take your questions.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Patti and Chris, for the introductions and your very warm welcome to the PG&E family. I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity to join the company at this moment in its journey. We are on a clear path towards recovery with an exceptional leadership team already in place. In the few months I have been here, I have witnessed momentum and real progress from the team, particularly as they have implemented waste elimination. I also see plenty of room for further upside with the continued deployment of our Simple, Affordable Model. This involves creating standards, measuring our performance, and creating the capacity for repeatable efficiency gains. Finance has a significant contribution to play as a disciplined steward of balance sheet health and financial reporting. This, in turn, allows us to continue maximizing investment on behalf of customers and investors.
Let me share a bit more of my journey to PG&E. Most recently, I was CFO at Chevron Phillips Chemical. CP Chem is a petrochemical joint venture between Chevron and Phillips 66. The element of my role there was driving business and cultural change while leading accounting, financial planning and analysis, treasury and tax. Earlier, I spent seven years at Dynegy, where I was part of the executive team brought in to turn around financial, operational, and cultural performance. I emphasize the three-prong approach there because I am a true believer that a successful turnaround requires diligent focus by the full executive team on all three of those components. Dynegy grew from a small regional independent power producer, or IPP, emerging from bankruptcy into a multi-regional integrated retail and power company.
While I had several roles there, leading many aspects of the enterprise, including my final role as EVP of Strategy and Administration, my proudest accomplishment is the launching and continuing success of PRIDE, Producing Results through Innovation by Dynegy Employees. Some of you may remember that PRIDE was their signature continuous margin and process improvement program and went through several rounds, resulting in over $400 million of savings, along with nearly $1 billion in balance sheet efficiency, all which were delivered consistently ahead of budget and schedule. It not only unlocked significant value from a financial perspective, but it was key to the cultural turnaround at the company because it both encouraged and celebrated greater employee ownership over Dynegy's success. Before that, I spent a few years at JP Morgan as the global controller for their commodities business as they grew that business.
Prior to that, I was part of the new team recruited to NRG Energy when they emerged from bankruptcy. At NRG, I was the corporate controller, and among other things, I was responsible for rebuilding the internal and external financial planning and analysis function and reestablishing a strong control environment over financial operations. I think my experience matches up really well to the current stage of the PG&E journey. We clearly have a very deep well of internal talent, which, as Patty mentioned, has delivered us onto a path of recovery. While I may be new to the regulated utility world, I'm hardly unfamiliar with the model. Indeed, at both Dynegy and NRG, utilities were highly effective competitors whom we admired and studied.
My prior experience as a financial executive in competitive commodity businesses and my past role as a director of a publicly traded utility give me some helpful insights as we look to build that continuous improvement muscle, which is going to be so central to PG&E's Simple, Affordable Model. In closing, I just want to emphasize I'm very excited to be here on the PG&E team. I'm very grateful to Chris for building an exceptionally strong team and the generous transition time, and I look forward to getting to know all of you better in the coming weeks. With that, I'm going to hand it back to Patti for some quick closing remarks.
Thank you, Carolyn, and thank you, Chris. I have every confidence that the two of you are gonna execute an efficient and thoughtful transition as we get ready for our Q1 earnings call in May. As I mentioned before, we're feeling good about our plans for this year and remain solidly on track to meet 2023 non-GAAP core EPS guidance of $1.19-1.23. Our core EPS growth rate guidance of at least 10% in 2023 and 2024 and at least 9% for 2025 and 2026 remains intact, along with our 9.5% compound average rate base growth through 2027 and our commitment to no new equity in either 2023 or 2024. With that, we can't wait to see many of you in California in May. The team is now available to take your questions.
Operator, if you could please now open the lines for Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, if you do have a question, that will be star one. Again, star one for questions. We'll hear first today from Shahriar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners.
Good afternoon, team. It's actually Constantine here for Char, and congrats to everyone on the transition.
Hey, Constantine. Thanks for joining us.
Appreciate the reiterated financial plan. Just maybe a quick question. In terms of the broader considerations for financial planning, do you think that this will impact any timing of internal reviews for cost management or financial decisions like dividend, capital allocation, or any other expectations around the Analyst Day?
Nope. Our plans continue to be, as we stated at the end of the quarter, the end of the year. you know, we're really excited about Carolyn's experience on financial transformation, and we actually think that she is a key enabler to us accelerating even additional waste elimination savings given all of her experience. We think it strengthens the plan.
Thank you for that. Maybe just could you help us contrast the skills and focus that you anticipate Carolyn will bring, just kind of what's new that will be brought to the team and if there's any implied change in focus for kind of the financial execution portion of the story?
I mean, this is Carolyn. I'll just say that, as noted, I've worked both at NRG and Dynegy. At the moment, particularly at NRG as they emerge from bankruptcy. I'm very familiar with what a company has gone through and how controls can change through a bankruptcy and what's needed in terms of rebuilding the team, rebuilding the systems, and rebuilding the controls. That's going to be my primary focus. I'm a financial operational. I have a financial operational background. That will be my focus. When you have that strength, that backbone, that helps unleash, I would say significant cost savings in other areas of the business. That's what we're looking to do here.
I'll just pile on. This is Patti piling on to Carolyn Burke. You know, her commitment to process and culture and her deep financial expertise is what made it such a logical decision for us, given she was here as a consultant, she was working with us, and when Chris Foster's opportunity came up, you know, I had a lot of confidence in putting Carolyn Burke in the role, given what I had seen in just the last couple months in her role here at the company.
Excellent. That sounds great. Thank you for taking the questions and congrats again to the team. Best of luck, Chris. Speak soon.
Thanks, Constantine.
We'll hear next from Paul Zimbardo with Bank of America.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you, team.
Hi, Paul.
Just a quick one for me. Just given the two recent senior changes, Patti, are you aware of any other changes that are on the horizon, or you think you've got the new roster filled out?
We definitely have the new roster filled out. you know, one of the things that gives me a lot of comfort is knowing that our operating procedures and processes are strengthening our performance playbook. Our lean operating system helps us to manage through changes in leadership like this. You know, we have an operating cadence of management reviews. We have a plan for the year. We have key objectives clearly identified and monitored. As Carolyn, since she's been here since the beginning of the year, just walks in and can step right into Chris's pace and continue to lead. It's a strength of an organization like that which we are building. I feel very good about that. The team who is here is definitely committed to the cause and excited about the future.
That includes me, to be perfectly clear, I'm not going anywhere, and I'm very excited about the team that we've built. You know, as the team evolves, that's the team for the time, and we certainly have it here at PG&E.
Okay, great. No, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Congratulations again.
Thanks, Paul.
Again for questions, that's star one at this time. We'll hear now from Ryan Levine with Citi.
Hi, everybody. Just one question. What was the process in selecting the new CFO? Was this over the course of several months? Did it include internal and external candidates? Or any color you could provide to how you came to the conclusion with Carolyn?
Yeah, great question, Ryan. You know, we have a robust succession planning process, and we consider external candidates when appropriate. Carolyn has been on our radar for some time thanks to Bob Flexon. As we mentioned, our board chair, Bob, had worked with Carolyn before. He's long sung her praises to us. We brought her in as a consultant, when this change occurred, she became a very logical and leading candidate. She was interviewed by the board. They agreed with me that she's the right leader for the right time. We're pretty excited that she will be taking on the role. We're grateful for her taking on the assignment.
Thank you.
With no other questions at this time, I'd like to turn things back to the company for any closing remarks.
Okay, thanks for joining us. As you can see, we'll have an orderly transition. We're happy to have an opportunity to introduce you to Carolyn in the coming months. Another good reason to come to California for Investor Day. Again, thanks so much for signing on today, and please be safe out there.
Again, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect.