NorthWestern Corporation (NASDAQ:NWE) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call April 28, 2023 3:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Travis Meyer - Director of Corporate Finance and IR Officer

Brian Bird - President and CEO

Crystal Lail - VP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Julien Patrick Dumoulin-Smith - BofA

Alex Mortimer - Mizuho

Chris Ellinghaus - Siebert Williams Shank

Travis Meyer

Good afternoon and thank you for joining NorthWestern Corporation's financial results webcast for the March 31, 2023, quarter ending. My name is Travis Meyer. I'm the Corporate Development and Investor Relations Officer for NorthWestern.

Joining us today to walk you through the results and provide an overall update are Brian Bird, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Crystal Lail, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. [Operator Instructions]

NorthWestern's results have been released, and the release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10-Q premarket 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 safe harbor provisions included in 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 archived replay of today's webcast will be available for 1 year beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern today and can be found in the Financial Results section of our website.

With that, I'll hand the presentation over to NorthWestern's CEO, Brian Bird.

Brian Bird

Thanks, Travis. We're actually speaking to you today from Billings, Montana. We have our Board meetings in our service territory primarily. And this particular trip to Billings has been also an opportunity not only to meet with our employees, but also to visit the Elliston County Generation Station, and it's approximately two thirds completed as we've built that project. You know it's certainly in the pause at this point in time. But the Board, the management team and employees, a matter of fact, certainly understand the value that plant will have not just for the Billings area, but for Montana as a whole and demonstrate -- we'll continue to demonstrate our support. We'll talk about that more in a minute.

Regarding the first quarter, from a regulatory execution standpoint, we reached a constructive multiparty settlement on the Montana rate review. And I think you all know, we're currently pending a commission approval. We're hopeful that the sentiment will be approved. We also did receive final approval necessary for our holding company formation. We also safely executed our capital plan. During the first quarter, we invested nearly $150 million, and we're on track to invest a total of $510 million of capital this year in 2023. We also pointed out in the 10-Q that even with the delay in Yellowstone County, we do expect that, that plan will be ready to serve our customers by the end of 2024.