The Southern Company (SO) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending September 30, 2022

October 27, 2022 1:00 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Scott, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Southern Company's Third 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, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please, go ahead, sir.

Scott Gammill - VP, IR & Treasurer

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon, and welcome to Southern Company's Third 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'll provide 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.

Tom Fanning - Chairman, President & CEO

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter financial results continue to support our full year earnings objectives. And the economies within our service territories remain strong, including customer growth and economic activity that has outpaced our expectations. Given our financial performance through the third quarter, we expect full year adjusted earnings per share near the top of our earnings guidance range.

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. Importantly, the projected completion timeline and capital cost forecast for both units remain consistent with what we outlined last quarter.

Since our last call, the site team has continued to make substantial progress on Unit 3, highlighted by the successful achievement of several major milestones, including submitting the all ITAAC complete letter, receiving the 103(g) finding from the NRC, which signifies that license acceptance criteria for Unit 3 have been met, and successfully completing the safe transfer of all 157 fuel assemblies from Unit 3 spent fuel pool to the reactor core early last week.