American Electric Power (AEP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 23, 2023 9:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to the American Electric Power Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the call over to our host Ms. Darcy Reese. Please go ahead.

Darcy Reese - VP, IR

Thank you, Brad. Good morning everyone and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2022 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 discuss of these factors. Joining me this morning for opening remarks are Julie Sloat, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Anne Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer. We will take your questions following their remarks. I will now turn the call over to Julie.

Julia Sloat - President, CEO & Director

Thanks, Darcy. Welcome, everyone, to American Electric Power's Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. I'm happy to be here with all of you this morning, and I'm pleased to be joined by our recently appointed CFO, Ann Kelly, who joined our team in late November. So here we go.

We're making great progress and have a lot to share with you today, starting with the financial performance of our fourth quarter and year. I'll provide update on our Kentucky operations sale, unregulated renewable sale and retail business strategic review. I'll also provide insight into the regulatory and legislative front, as we work to implement important new initiatives to ensure our customers and communities needs, which are met in turn, and drives our high-quality investment proposition.

Finally, I'll include an update -- or I'll conclude with an update on our generation fleet transformation as we continue to invest in regulated renewables and our energy delivery infrastructure, a summary of 2022 highlights and our focus for 2023 can be found on Slides 6 and 7 of today's presentation. As you know, we have a long history of consistently delivering and exceeding our earnings guidance and 2022 is no exception.

I'm very proud of the dedication and accomplishments of the entire AEP team over the past year. While we finished the year strong, I can promise you, we're just getting started. Our robust financial plan continues to yield results. We delivered strong fourth quarter 2022 operating earnings of $1.05 per share bringing our full year 2022 operating earnings to $5.09 per share. We're also -- we also increased our quarterly dividend from $0.78 to $0.83 per share, which we announced back in October. AEP's teamwork-driven performance in 2022 has established a strong foundation from which we can reaffirm our 2023 full year operating earnings guidance range of $5.19 to $5.39, all while mitigating inflationary cost pressures, supply chain pressures and higher interest rates as well as constructively navigating regulatory and legislative frameworks. Formula rates in several of our state jurisdictions and in our high-growth transmission business help us to manage increased interest expense and higher costs.