American Electric Power Company (AEP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

July 27, 2023 9:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the American Electric Power Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. At this time, all parties are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded.

I'd now like to turn the conference over to our host, Vice President of Investor Relations, Ms. Darcy Reese. Please go ahead.

Darcy Reese

Thank you, Brad. Good morning everyone, and welcome to the second quarter 2023 earnings call for American Electric Power. We appreciate you taking time today to join us. Our earnings release, presentation slides and related financial information are available on our website at aep.com. Today, we will be making forward-looking statements during the call. There are many factors that may cause future results to differ materially from these statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a discussion of these factors.

Joining me this morning for opening remarks are Julie Sloat, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ann Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer. We will take your questions following their remarks.

I will now turn the call over to Julie.

Julie Sloat

Thanks Darcy. Welcome everyone to American Electric Power's second quarter 2023 earnings call. Good to be with everyone this morning. It's a rapid time of change in our industry with new opportunities resulting from federal policy shifts and evolving state and customer priorities. We also continue to navigate a dynamic environment with rising interest rates and supply chain constraints. In short, it's definitely an exciting time to be at AEP as we make significant progress on our important stakeholder commitments and strategic objectives, including delivering on our 2023 operating earnings guidance and 6% to 7% annual operating earnings growth, providing dividend growth in line with earnings, strengthening our balance sheet as we move through the next few quarters, actively managing our portfolio, achieving net-zero by 2045 and central to our purpose, keeping our customer rates affordable.

We recently made some organizational adjustments such as the restructuring of our Federal Affairs function, the realignment of our regulatory team, and the refreshment of some of our operating company presidents. These changes will help us to operate more effectively and facilitate our success in this ever-changing environment. As always, we keep the customer at the center of every decision we make. This is why we engage with our federal and state regulators so we know how to best support our operating companies while we balance investor preferences as we grow the business and invest $40 billion over the next five years in new generation resources and our energy delivery infrastructure.