Southern Co (SO) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2022

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

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Tommy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Southern Company Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions].

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, Tommy. Good afternoon, and welcome to Southern Company's Second 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 the Form 10-K, Form 10-Qs and subsequent filings.

In addition, we'll 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 Fanning.

Thomas 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 second quarter, meaningfully ahead of the estimate provided last quarter. The economies within our Southeast service territories remain strong, 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'd first like to provide an update on the recent progress at Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4. The projected completion timeline forecast for both units remains within the ranges we provided the last 2 quarters, although at the end of those ranges. At Unit 3, we continue to progress with all necessary systems turned over from construction to testing, all inspection records related to ITAACs complete and then submittal of 51 ITAACs since our last earnings call, including 2, which were just filed this morning. 2 ITAACs remain outstanding.

Concurrent with our final ITAACs submittals, we plan to submit the all ITAAC complete letter to the NRC for Unit 3. This submittal should position us for receipt of the historic 103G finding from the NRC a few weeks later, documenting that license acceptance criteria for Unit 3 have been met. Upon receipt of the 103G finding from the NRC, no further NRC findings are necessary for Southern Nuclear to load fuel or begin the startup up sequence.