NextEra Energy Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

In Florida, the early signs of economic recovery we witnessed in prior quarters appear to have slowed. After significant employment growth in late 2011, Florida's pace of job creation has slowed. The Florida unemployment rate in June was flat compared to May, but has dropped more than 2% since this time last year. Consumer confidence in Florida increased in June relative to last year, but declined versus the prior month. We saw an uptick in tourism taxable sales, which are now trending above the levels seen prior to the recession, and the housing market continues to show signs of modest improvement.

Notwithstanding the somewhat hesitant recovery, we continue to invest in the business to provide greater value for our customers and to keep our overall bills low. We are making major investments to modernize our generation fleet and increase our nuclear generation output to be more efficient, to reduce emissions and to drive down fuel costs for customers. Over the lives of these projects, we expect that fuel and other savings will more than offset the capital and operating costs of these projects.

At Energy Resources, our focus has been on executing the plans for our record backlog of renewables projects. All of our projects continue to proceed with no significant changes in the execution timeline.

As a result of the progress we have made in the first half of the year, our overall financial expectations remain about the same as we previously discussed. For 2012, we expect adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $4.35 to $4.65, and for 2014, we continue to see a range of $5.05 to $5.65, subject to all the usual caveats we provide, including normal weather and operating conditions.

Let's now look at our results for the second quarter of 2012. I'll start with the results at FPL before moving on to Energy Resources and then the consolidated numbers. For the second quarter of 2012, FPL reported net income of $353 million or $0.85 per share, up $0.13 per share year-over-year. The principal driver of FPL's earnings growth was continued investment in the business. During the quarter, we invested roughly $1.1 billion of the approximately $4.1 billion that we expect to invest in the business in 2012, and regulatory capital employed, that is capital on which we are able to earn a return, grew 17.5% over the same quarter last year.

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