Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Portland General Electric Company's second quarter 2022 earnings results conference call. Today is Thursday, July 28, 2022. This call is being recorded, and as such, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one one on your telephone keypad. If you do intend to, please avoid the use of speakerphones. For opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference call over to Portland General Electric's Senior Director of Finance, Investor Relations, and Risk Management, Jardon Jaramillo. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy you can join us today. Before we begin this morning, I would like to remind you that we have prepared a presentation to supplement our discussion, which we will be referencing throughout the call. The slides are available on our website at investors.portlandgeneral.com. Referring to slide two, some of our remarks this morning will constitute forward-looking statements. We caution you that such statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from our expectations. For a description of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to our earnings press release and our most recent periodic reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which are available on our website. Leading our discussion today are Maria Pope, President and CEO, and Jim Ajello, Senior Vice President of Finance, CFO, Treasurer, and CCO.
Following their prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Maria.
Thank you, Jardon, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Beginning with slide four, I'll start by discussing our strong quarter and provide some operational and regulatory highlights. We reported GAAP net income of $64 million, or $0.72 per share, compared with net income of $32 million, or $0.36 per share in the second quarter of last year. Due to these strong results, we're revising our GAAP earnings guidance to $2.60-$2.75 per share. Additionally, after further evaluating the first quarter write-off of the 2020 wildfire and COVID deferrals, and after receiving further clarification from the Oregon Public Utility Commission, we are also initiating non-GAAP adjusted earnings guidance of $2.74-$2.89 per share.
This addition reflects our ongoing work to provide the most meaningful comparison of our earnings and assessment of ongoing financial performance. Our results this quarter reflect several key drivers. We're seeing continued growth in energy deliveries, particularly on the industrial side with semiconductor, high-tech, and digital customers. Several new and existing semiconductor manufacturers are expanding their operations in our region. This builds upon decades of investment in the state and extends a longer secular trend in immigration and business growth. Many of our investments at Portland General are critical to the infrastructure that supports the technology sector. As we discussed in the first quarter call, operating expenses are also higher due to wildfire mitigation as well as grid resilience and enhancements to customer and other digital technologies.
On the power and fuel expense front, we've had a great hydro year and have had benefited from the very favorable power market conditions. As many of you know, our region experienced the wettest second quarter in the last 81 years, as well as record-breaking spring snowfall. Moving to slide five. As we look to the future, we're focused on three key areas, advancing investment that drives growth in alignment with the state's energy policies, enhancing performance and operating efficiency, and operating our system with a focus on risk management. We are pleased with the operational and financial progress we're making in these areas, and we're well positioned as we execute through year-end and beyond. Let me start with growth.
We're living in a transformational moment in the energy industry, and Portland General Electric is leading the way by advancing the state's policy goals and investing strategically to build a clean energy future. We continue to see opportunity related to resource acquisition as we seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet 2030 emissions targets. On July 15th, the OPUC verbally acknowledged our RFP shortlist. Given inflationary pressures, a process is underway for parties to refresh their bids. While we hope this is short, we will need to be patient as we work with independent evaluator to ensure the best price and lowest risk for customers while maintaining the attractive diversity of wind, solar, battery, and pump storage resources. We remain optimistic that we will announce executed agreements by the end of this year.
The projects are expected to be in service by the end of 2024 to capture expiring federal production tax credits for the benefit of customers. While the process is ongoing, any new generation capacity ownership opportunities will have an impact on our equity needs in 2023 and beyond, which Jim will discuss shortly. The RFP process represents an important step in accelerating the clean energy transformation and is a key aspect in our ability to decarbonize our power supply while continuing to provide reliable, affordable energy to everyone we serve. While the ink is not yet dry, we are also looking ahead and expect to issue our next integrated resource plan and file our inaugural clean energy plan in early 2023. Turning to performance. During a period of significant inflation and growth, we are all the more disciplined in managing our costs.
Like most companies, we're dealing with the impacts of a strong labor market and high inflation. We are intently focused on driving operational productivity and performance while holding overall cost trends stable. As an example, on the T&D side, crew productivity is up about a third since 2018 thanks to better use of technology, investments in the grid, and improvements in overall workflow. Today, we are getting a lot more work done at the same cost. Much of our digital improvements have been focused on customers. We have improved web-based solutions, payment options, communications, and better reliability through greater visibility and distributed automation. On the generation side, our thermal plant operating performance has remained high over the last five years. Today, our peaker plant utilization has more than tripled to support renewable adoption, all the while saving money and maintaining availability.
While we're operating more efficiently, we're also improving safety. Safety statistics, including vehicle incidents, have shown an 80% improvement over the last five years. Now turning to risk management, as the work we're doing to manage costs supports our ability to invest in robust and improved risk management. First, as a vertically integrated utility, we're well-positioned. For example, while commodity prices, in particular natural gas prices, have shown significant volatility throughout 2022, our regulatory mechanisms, hedging strategies, strong balance sheet, and credit ratings have all helped to mitigate potential impacts to customers and shareholders. In late April, the OPUC approved our 2022 Wildfire Mitigation Plan, which was timely in light of the Oregon Department of Forestry's recent declaration that all of Oregon is now in wildfire season. While wildfire season typically extends from May through October, wildfire-related planning is year-round.
Our mitigation initiatives this year are well underway and showing results. This work is paired with long-term investments in wildfire cameras, automated reclosers, weather stations, all to increase situational awareness and provide visibility in high-risk fire zones. Our risk mitigation, of course, goes beyond wildfires. Our climate is becoming more extreme in every season. The investments we're making today are making our system more resilient and reliable. Our integrated operations center is a great example, as it allows us to monitor, control our entire system in real time. It centralizes a range of vital functions that is critical to resource and system integration. It helps us manage and improve reliability with daily grid management, and it serves as a central hub to oversee efforts to increase resilience and security.
As you all have seen in the press, we are in the middle of an extreme heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. This facility, our integrated operations center, is improving our ability to respond to these circumstances, which put a great deal of stress on the grid. Finally, I'd like to touch on our focus on areas in the coming quarter. Market conditions for power costs are favorable, as they were in the second quarter, and our outlook for the third quarter is solid. We're monitoring the possibility of constraints in regional power markets that could produce significant higher energy costs, such as we saw last year. We're laser-focused on closely managing O&M in light of our run rate in the first half of the year and our current inflationary environment.
Finally, yesterday, we filed for the amortization of major deferral expense balances related to the 2020 Labor Day wildfire, the February 2021 ice storm, and the 2021 power cost adjustment mechanism, or PCAM. All of these represent a total of $132 million of outstanding major deferrals. Additionally, we plan to file for amortization of the $34 million COVID-19 deferral in late 2022 or early 2023. As we close the books on a solid quarter, it's worth noting that the key to our success is focusing on what matters most, safe, reliable, affordable clean energy, with customers at the center of all we do, enabling their well-being and the advancement of the communities we serve, all the while creating opportunities to invest, delivering value for all stakeholders and shareholders alike. With that, thank you, and let me turn it over to Jim.
Thank you, Maria, and good morning, everyone. Moving to slide six, our second quarter results reflect the strength of our service territory and a dynamic and favorable power market as well as broader economic conditions. The regional economy continues a trend of strong growth, and within migration, industrial development, all driving rising demand. We saw the unemployment rate in our service territory decline to 3.2% in June of 2022, compared to 5% in June of 2021. We also continue to witness strong growth fundamentals in our service territory, highlighted by high growth in the industrial sector. Overall, Q2 2022 loads increased by 1% weather adjusted compared to Q2 2021. Residential load decreased 3.2% year-over-year, weather adjusted, as we began to witness a moderation from usage patterns during the peak of the pandemic.
Residential customer count growth remained steady at 1.3% compared to Q2 2021. Commercial load decreased 1.7% year-over-year, weather adjusted, due in large part to decreased need for irrigation in 2022 after record rainfall during the spring. The high-tech and digital services sectors continued on their existing growth trajectory as we saw over 9.8% higher industrial loads, weather adjusted year-over-year. On a weather adjusted basis, total load increased 0.4% year-over-year. Weather adjusted retail deliveries were up 2.7% year-over-year first half 2022. Beyond the continued strength of our region, we observed significantly more favorable power market conditions in Q2 of 2022 relative to the prior year.
These conditions, coupled with deliberate actions by our power operations team to manage purchased power and fuel cost on behalf of customers, led to improved financial results compared to last year. As we look at the broad economy, we are closely watching the impacts of inflation. In the near term, we are managing inflation pressures on O&M by focusing on an efficient spend throughout our business and believe that O&M pressures are manageable within our current guidance. I'll note that from 2017 to 2022, our base O&M increased at a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 1%. If one adds in non-deferrable vegetation management wildfire mitigation expenses, the CAGR is closer to 2% based on the midpoint of 2022 O&M guidance. Yet, I think we could do better.
As we look to the remainder of 2022 and beyond, we are focused on creating more efficient operations and effectively managing commodity risks to minimize the impact of cost pressures on customers. I will now cover our financial performance quarter-over-quarter. We experienced a $0.05 increase in total revenues attributed to the previously mentioned increase in deliveries led by industrial customers. While load was up 0.4% quarter-over-quarter, the significant increases in industrial load were partially offset by decreases in residential and commercial loads, resulting in some offsetting effects due to the composition of customer prices. This created a $0.07 decrease in total revenues. As noted earlier, Q2 2021 power cost conditions were challenging, and $0.31 of the quarter-over-quarter earnings change relates to headwinds in 2021 that did not recur.
$0.19 is attributed to a more favorable power market in the current quarter, driven by strong hydro conditions in the region, as well as conditions and company strategies that allowed us to resell power and gas into the market at optimal times and prices. This includes the strategic dispatch of our generation fleet, which gives us the opportunity to respond to market conditions, producing power when it is cheaper relative to market rates, and selling excess power when market prices are advantageous. This is all to mitigate risk and volatility and manage costs for the benefit of our customers. There was a $0.07 decrease in EPS from higher operating expenses Q2 2022. O&M drivers include $0.02 of additional wildfire mitigation, reflecting incremental work performed in 2022 to implement our recently approved wildfire mitigation plan.
$0.02 of customer service spend related to transportation electrification, enablement and enhancements to the digital customer experience. $0.02 of additional outside service and labor costs for grid reliability and resiliency. One cent decrease from higher administrative expense, primarily driven by insurance cost increases. There was a $0.04 decrease due to lower market-derived returns on the non-qualified benefit trust compared to Q2 2021. Finally, we achieved a $0.01 decrease for other miscellaneous items. Turning to slide seven, which shows our capital forecast through 2026. We have again increased our capital expenditure forecast for 2022 by an additional $70 million, up by $105 million compared to the original forecast of $650 million. This reflects additional opportunities for plant and grid resiliency investment.
As a reminder, our current investment plan calls for over $3.3 billion of capital investment over the next five years, primarily related to system resiliency and transportation electrification. This number does not include any expenditures related to the possible RFP ownership options. Turning to slide eight. We continue to maintain a solid balance sheet, including strong liquidity and investment-grade credit ratings, accompanied by a stable credit outlook. Total available liquidity on June 30th is $870 million, and we remain in a strong liquidity position. We plan to fund investments from cash from operations and an issuance of $220 million of debt later in 2022.
This debt is expected to be issued under our green financing framework as we continue to seek out opportunities to tie our long-term debt to our sustainability strategy for capital investments. On to slide nine. As we look forward to our capital needs in 2023 and beyond, we are assessing the equity needs primarily related to the potential RFP investments as well as creating balance sheet flexibility. Previously, we've discussed the long-term equity needs to rebalance our capital structure for regulatory purposes and to maintain strong credit ratings. We believe a strong balance sheet creates important benefits to both shareholders and customers, including optimal financing costs while facilitating growth options, most notably for successive rounds of RFP investment opportunities needed to achieve the 2030 decarb goals.
While our ultimate equity needs will be linked to RFP investment opportunities, our capital structure will likely need to align the historical regulatory ranges over time. We are excited about our growth prospects for the new generation and capacity assets, which are in addition to the $3 billion of base CapEx to be spent between 2022 and 2026. As mentioned by Maria, we are revising our GAAP-based earnings guidance from $2.50 to $2.65 to a new number of $2.60-$2.75 per diluted share. We also received additional information after our first quarter call that allowed us to further evaluate our earnings guidance, particularly related to the deferral reductions recorded in Q1 2022 as a result of the general rate case order.
Importantly, we received clarification from the OPUC that reiterated that the commission has an established practice of evaluating deferrals on a case-by-case basis and will continue to employ a fact-specific approach on each case going forward. In light of this clarification, and as we look ahead to the second half of 2022, we are also initiating non-GAAP basis adjusted earnings guidance of $2.74-$2.89, which excludes the impact of the released deferrals associated with the year ended 2020. The second quarter results reflect continued load growth and strong power cost performance. As we move past the midpoint of the year, we remain focused on strong execution for the balance of 2022.
We anticipate continued economic growth in our region, driving weather-adjusted retail load growth of 2%-2.5%, led by continued high-tech and digital growth and continued in-migration. We will further employ our power cost framework, which yielded successful risk management strategies in the second quarter and helped dampen the impact on customer prices in the run-up of commodity prices in the current year. Operating cost challenges remain, and we are continuing to take proactive measures to manage O&M for the remainder of 2022, including continued focus on operational efficiency and high-return O&M activities, deploying technology and digital solutions to manage customer needs while optimizing performance and managing costs.
I am confident we are on the right track as we continue to drive efficiencies through the end of the year, which, coupled with continued load growth, will allow us to achieve our long-term earnings guidance growth of 4%-6%. We will evaluate this growth rate as we get certainty around the RFP process. I'm optimistic our outlook for the second half of 2022 and beyond is strong. Our near-term growth, investment opportunities, and the ability to raise capital for growth is also strong. The ongoing commitment to providing clean, reliable, and affordable energy and long-term focus to decarbonize the grid and electrify the economy is unwavering. We have established the framework for PGE to accomplish our long-term financial goals and deliver value to our customers, investors, and communities. Now, operator, we're ready for questions.
Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Your question please.
Hey, good morning, everyone. It's actually Ryan on for Julien.
Morning.
Appreciate the update. Good morning. Appreciate the update here. Maybe just on that last point, Jim, in terms of revisiting the longer-term growth rate, is final resolution of the RFP process the only gating item at this point? Any other considerations that are kind of more dynamic in nature and factor into how you think about things?
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. I think that is the gating item for us. We'll determine where we are at with the RFP awards in the fourth quarter. We'll focus in on a more precise vision of our financing plan. Obviously we're modeling scenarios now, but we're already operating, as you will know and see the new guidance, in the 5+ 5 range right now. We're comfortably inside the current guidance, and I think the RFP will give us an opportunity on balance to grow the growth rate even more. Yes, in a word.
Excellent. Any shift in the macro backdrop that's impacting the process and how you're thinking about ability to participate here?
Maria mentioned that bidding is being refreshed, and it's probably no surprise to anyone given what's happening in the macro environment with the cost of money, supply chain issues, inflation, and the like. We think that's a natural part of the process. We think it can be dispatched pretty quickly, and you know, we still are confident that we can get resolution, you know, by the end of the fourth quarter with awards in place. The macroeconomic environment, to no one's surprise, is affecting these bids as you might expect.
Yep, understood. Maybe just lastly, any way to quantify how you're thinking about the impact of getting rid of decoupling here and how that could factor into your longer-term trajectory?
Yeah, good question. Clearly we have a stub year that we're presently in. New rates and the decoupling mechanisms elimination, although there's a tracker there, you probably have seen that for the balance of the year, reflect a year where it's not fully effective, let's put it that way. Starting next year, the lack of decoupling will be fully effective. Just to remind everyone, we bargained for that result because we think on balance, we're one of the growthier utilities, if I can use that word. There's tremendous growth here. I think that we wanna be able to realize on that, return capital to invest in the business. I don't have a quantification for you right now. Look for that in the year guidance that we'll publish in February of 2022, no 2023, pardon me.
Excellent. I'll leave it there. Thanks so much for the time.
Cool.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Insoo Kim from Goldman Sachs. Your question please.
Hey, thank you.
Morning , Insoo .
Morning, Maria. First question, I guess as we think about 2022 and the guidance and performance for the year and into 2023 as well. I guess the adjusted guidance, you know, excluding the regulatory items and with the strong performance on the power side, kind of gets you back to where the original guidance was for the year with the, I guess, the power benefits offsetting maybe some of the O&M inflationary aspects. If I heard correctly, your third quarter is set up pretty well, it seems, just from a power side as well.
How are you trying to think about positioning for 2023, whether it's pull forward of even more costs, and how much of that lever do you have, and on a 2023 versus 2022 basis, do you have any initial indications of whether you're, you know, more like better positioned or roughly the same as, you know, when you started off the year?
Sure. Insoo, your analysis of where we are is spot on, and it's a good question. We are doubling down on our focus on costs. I think it's really important that we continue to invest in the business but also to lower costs at the same time. It's important for customers, and it's important for our results overall. With regards to power costs, we're really focusing on technology that will give us better visibility across the market, better tools to be able to manage in a more volatile environment, and as well as making sure that we have the kind of hedges and mechanisms in place that can really protect the company and customers from spikes that could come as a result of scarce power supply, high heat events, or extreme cold that we're seeing.
We're really living in a much more volatile environment, and therefore, the power operations practices we have, the hedging that we do, and overall management and visibility is really important. There's no question that we as well as everyone in corporate America is facing increased inflation, labor issues, and challenges that we haven't seen in a long time in our economy, and we're recognizing them and hitting them head on.
Just to add one thing, Insoo. We anticipate transitioning to the adjusted only presentation into 2023, right? Please keep our framework today in mind as we go forward there.
Yep. No, that makes sense. You know, as you talk about the potential for additional investments through the RFP and, you know, the equity financing needs that may take place, you know, as we think about just, I guess, the legislative potential bills in the hopper right now as of last night and the different components of it, any initial look on the net impact to those financing considerations if, you know, whatever version is out there were to take place?
I think on the energy side, there's still a lot to work through. As you know, we have been strong advocates for a clean energy policy at the federal level, everything from sort of tech neutral to the ability for utilities to utilize Investment Tax Credits on an equal playing field. We also are really encouraged with what's happened with regards to the CHIPS Act. What you may not realize is that about 15% of semiconductor manufacturing actually takes place in Portland General's service territory. Intel has very large operations, and much of their R&D is done here. In particular, they're investing in their advanced lithography, and we have several other companies who service the semiconductor industry or who are semiconductor manufacturers themselves, who are increasing their investments.
You can see our quarter-on-quarter growth in that area, and we would expect it to only continue and to be quite robust, not just for the next couple of years, but really for the decade to come.
I think it's through the prospect of legislation, the so-called Manchin-Schumer arrangement from last night, the inflation bill. It portends potentially significant benefits with PTC, ITC extensions and the like. I think this plays into our strategy very, very well, as does IIJA, which we've been examining for a number of months now. Yes, we have a lot of capital to deploy. Yes, that'll bring a lot of financing. I also think that these legislative tailwinds, if they become enacted, could be very significant for us.
Got it. Just to clarify, I guess, based on what's out there relative to, you know, I guess, the potential amount of equity needs that you you know had modeled in, would this potentially reduce that, or would there be not much of a change?
Well, I'm assuming now that we are sort of on our own until we see the tangible benefits coming out of Washington, right? We'll be sizing our needs based on the RFP awards and in addition to the balance sheet strengthening that I mentioned relative to the ratios that we'll have to achieve over time. It's our very, very strong belief that we should be keeping stout investment-grade ratings with stable outlooks because we have the next seven years in front of us, not the next two or three only, in terms of our key opportunities. We want to go into that period to achieve the 80% decarb goals through investment in a very strong financial footing.
Got it. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Maria.
Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star one one. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Sophie Karp from KeyBanc. Your question please.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question.
Morning, Sophie.
Morning. I just wanted to ask you about the potential for, I guess, tax credit transferability or direct pay that I understand is buried somewhere in that bill, right? I appreciate it's 700 pages, and you probably sifted through it. Historically, I think you were a little bit at a disadvantage versus some of the non-regulated entities when bidding into renewable projects because of tax treatment. Does that change things for you potentially where it levels the playing field?
Sure. Sophie, first of all, thank you for the question and, you're right, we do have production tax credit carry-forwards. Direct pay would be beneficial. It's our view that actually a level playing field to be able to utilize the same investment tax credits for solar, battery storage, and other mechanisms that don't put regulated utilities at a disadvantage is the most important aspect of the legislation going forward. We remain very encouraged, and I would add that we're very fortunate that our senior senator from Oregon, Senator Wyden, has been front and center in the negotiations as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. We've been in contact with him as late as last night. This is something we're spending a lot of time on and are deeply involved in and will make a difference to our business.
Thank you. That's all I had. Appreciate the answer.
Thanks, Sophie.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Crowdell from Mizuho. Your question please.
Hi. Good morning, Jim. Good morning, Maria.
Good morning.
Jim, I just wanna make sure I heard correctly. I believe you said going forward, the guidance that you will be providing is on a non-GAAP basis. Is that correct?
Yeah. I mentioned that, you should anticipate that we'll carry on with that basis into 2023.
Jim, what you're saying is that we will exclude items that might be extraordinary or unusual and not reflective of the overall run rate of our business.
That's right. In order to provide more transparency and really to demonstrate what the actual earnings power of the underlying business is.
Great. Thank you. I'm just referencing slide six on this question. If I look at the biggest variation there, it's mainly related to PCAM, and it at least for me, it's a challenge for me to forecast it. Any thought to maybe excluding the PCAM, whether it's a plus or a minus from the non-GAAP measure, just to highlight the strength in earnings of the utility? 'Cause sometimes maybe up or down, it may get distorted by the PCAM and on the non-GAAP. Any thought to excluding it?
Yeah. I really appreciate the question because as I look at the volatility year-over-year, right? I understand exactly why you'd ask that question. It did not occur to us this first time out, if you will, using adjusted earnings to do that, but maybe we can examine how to, you know, make that more transparent. Just gives me the opportunity to say that there are dramatic differences year-over-year in terms of weather. You know, we had a nice cool spring. We had wonderful hydro. Last year was the absolute opposite. We had enormous heat dome at 116 degrees Fahrenheit. When you plug through these activities in the mechanism, it really demonstrates the volatility of that. We look at the mechanism all the time, and we'll take into account your question about how to present that. Certainly the quarter-over-quarter differences suggest the same question to us.
Great. Just lastly, a quick follow-up. On the load growth guidance that you have for this year, maybe going forward, are you guys assuming pre-pandemic levels? I know there was a change in the customer mix here on the margin, but is guidance based on the pre-pandemic level or you guys have, you know, altered it?
Overall, our guidance represents, you know, really quite extraordinary growth in the high-tech and digital areas. In particular, I noted the semiconductor company is expanding in our area. What you'll also see is commercial has been a little bit slower to come back than we would have expected. We do see slower growth probably in the residential side. But overall, our mix is certainly shifting. That provides opportunity not only to spread our fixed costs over higher levels of growth, but particularly the semiconductor business requires pretty substantial investment.
Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions and congrats on a good quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Aditya Gandhi from Wolfe Research. Your question, please.
Yeah, hi. You actually have Steve Fleishman here. Can you hear me okay, Marie and Jim?
Yep.
Sure.
Okay, good. Sorry to sneak in there. I have a couple questions. First, just Jim, you mentioned kind of getting the equity ratio back to what's in your jurisdictional rates. Could you just give a sense of where the equity ratio is now and how much equity you might need to get it to kind of, you know, to the level that's in your jurisdictional rates?
Yeah. The first question, Steve, is pretty easy. It's we estimate by the end of 2022, pro forma here, we'll be a skosh over 46% on a regulated basis of 50%. In terms of getting it back, you know, it depends on how we do this and how much time, you know, we have to do this. Typically, a point of equity is close to $100 million, right? But that depends on so many other things. It depends on how we grow the company otherwise through the RFPs and the like. I wouldn't necessarily just calculate that out at 4 points.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Then on the RFP itself, you mentioned the inflation aspect and just you know, I guess to the degree you win them means more rate base growth opportunity, and just is there any way to get a sense of, you know, how meaningful the increase related to that might be in terms of like inflationary changes from what you would've thought before?
Right now, Steve, those prices are being refreshed. Directionally, the bid package I could say is higher than the last time we went to the market, back a few years ago. They were already higher than the base of what we saw a few years back. Now I suspect they'll be refreshed upwards a little bit as well. I don't have an exact number for you now. We're still in the process of getting those new bids, refreshed.
Steve, as you can see from the materials, we do have a number of bids. We have PPA options, we have company-owned options, and we have hybrid options. It's a robust and very competitive environment. When you go back out to refresh bids, things could change.
Okay. Okay. So, it's hard to figure out kinda weird. That's helpful. Just in terms of, I guess more broadly, you know, between the, you know, equity needed to kind of get the balance sheet back to the 50% plus this growth that if you do win the RFP, just how are you thinking about. I mean, have you thought of some options other than straight equity, I guess, to facilitate that? How are you thinking about getting all that funding?
Yeah. Steve, we've really focused on this a lot lately and get a lot of inbound questions about it because, you know, we could see a very large opportunity here, right? I wanna make sure we do this in the most non-dilutive way as we possibly can. I will tell you that, you know, Equity Forwards make a lot of sense. You know, the projects are gonna be delivered on a Build-Own-Transfer basis. We'll be making progress payments on them if we're awarded them next year in 2023. Most of them will be delivered, you know, CODs in 2024. The big funding requirement is in 2024. Beyond an Equity Forward, I suspect that the at-the-market program makes sense as we fill in the needs that we have.
You know, that's my sense right now of technique. The amounts are to be determined. As I said a moment ago, we'll trigger that off to the actual RFP awards, and we'll wanna make sure that we, you know, principally position ourselves here with growth and over time managing that equity ratio. There's no immediacy and no immediate pressure, you know, to do that balance sheet work. I'd rather do it in concert, you know, efficiently issue when we have both the growth and the balance sheet stuff together.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Appreciate the time.
You're welcome.
Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Once again, if you have a question, please press star one one. This does conclude the question- and- answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Maria Pope for any further remarks.
Great. Thank you very much for joining us today. Before we finish up, I'd like to thank Dave Robertson, our Vice President of Public Policy, who has announced his retirement and is leaving us at the end of the month after 18 years of extraordinary leadership at our company. He's been responsible for much of our clean energy future and the legislation that we benefit from today. We welcome Nik Blosser, who joins us most recently from the Biden administration in the White House, and prior to that, was a key member of the governor's office here in Oregon. Welcome, Nik, and we look forward to working with you in the public policy and communications area. Today, we appreciate your interest in our company, and hope to connect with you in the near future at some of the investor conferences, and please follow up with very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.