The Southern Company (SO) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 28, 2022 1:00 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Kelly, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Southern Company First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Gammill, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Gammill - Director, IR

Thank you, Kelly. Good afternoon and welcome to Southern Company’s first quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Tom Fanning, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company; and Dan Tucker, Chief Financial Officer.

Let me remind you we’ll be making forward-looking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Qs, and subsequent filings.

In addition, we will present non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the financial information we released this morning, as well as the slides for this conference call, which are both available on our Investor Relations website at investor.southerncompany.com.

At this time, I’ll turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Fanning - Chairman, President & CEO

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. As you can see from the materials we released this morning, we reported strong adjusted earnings results for the first quarter ahead of our estimates.

The economies within our Southeast service territories are among the best in the United States and we believe we are well-positioned to achieve our financial objectives for 2022.

Before turning the call over to Dan for a more detailed look at our financial performance, I will first provide an update on recent progress at Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4.

Importantly, the projected completion timeline and capital cost forecast for both units are unchanged from the updates that we provided last quarter. Since that time, we've seen sustained progress consistent with our expectations for each unit.

The NRC completed its follow-up inspection this week and issued its final supplemental report. The inspection verified that Southern Nuclear effectively implemented the corrective actions and remediation efforts at the site. No additional findings were identified during the follow-up inspection and the findings identified last year have been closed. With this step complete, the Vogtle site returns to the baseline inspection program.