PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 1, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Andy Ludwig – Vice President, Investor Relations
Vince Sorgi – President and Chief Executive Officer
Joe Bergstein – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Durgesh Chopra – Evercore ISI
Steve Fleishman – Wolfe Research

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the PPL Corporation First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note today’s event is being recorded.

I’d now like to turn the conference over to Andy Ludwig, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Andy Ludwig

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the PPL conference call on first quarter 2024 financial results. We have provided slides for this presentation on the Investors section of our website. We begin today’s call with updates from Vince Sorgi, PPL President and CEO; and Joe Bergstein, Chief Financial Officer and conclude with a Q&A session following our prepared remarks.

Before we get started, I’ll draw your attention to Slide 2 and a brief cautionary statement. Our presentation today contains forward-looking statements about future operating results or other future events. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the appendix of this presentation and PPL’s SEC filings for a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements. We will also refer to non-GAAP measures, including earnings from ongoing operations or ongoing earnings on this call. For reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the appendix.

I’ll now turn the call over to Vince.

Vince Sorgi

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter investor update. Let’s start with our financial results and a few highlights from the quarter on Slide 4. Today, we reported first quarter GAAP earnings of $0.42 per share. Adjusting for special items, first quarter earnings from ongoing operations were $0.54 per share representing a 12.5% increase over ongoing earnings of $0.48 per share a year ago. This increase was supported by additional returns on capital investments and higher sales volumes as we saw milder weather last year compared to this year.

Looking ahead, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our 2024 ongoing earnings forecast of $1.63 to $1.75 per share with a midpoint of $1.69 per share. We are also on track to complete approximately $3.1 billion in infrastructure improvements this year to strengthen grid reliability and resiliency and advance a cleaner energy mix without compromising on affordability for our customers. At the same time, we remain confident in our long-term business plan as we execute our strategy to create the utilities of the future. We’re well positioned to achieve our projected 6% to 8% annual earnings per share and dividend growth through at least 2027. As we outlined in February, our capital plan includes $14.3 billion in infrastructure improvements from 2024 to 2027. And across PPL, we continue to drive greater efficiency through our utility of the future strategy to help keep energy affordable for our customers. With this in mind, we’re on pace to achieve our annual O&M savings target of at least $175 million by 2026.