Northeast Utilities Q3 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

Northeast Utilities (NU)

Q3 2010 Earnings Call

November 01, 2010 10:00 am ET

Executives

Gregory Butler - Senior Vice President and General Counsel

Company Speaker -

Charles Shivery - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman of Executive Committee

Leon Olivier - Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Western Massachusetts Electric Company

Jay Buth - Vice President of Accounting and Controller

Jeffrey Kotkin -

David McHale - Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President

Presentation

Operator

Compare to:
Previous Statements by NU
» Northeast Utilities Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript
» Northeast Utilities Q1 2008 Earnings Call Transcript
» Northeast Utilities Q4 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

Well, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your joining us at this very early hour, though I think folks in the east coast may not [indiscernible] in bed early. I'm Jeff Hodgkins, I'm Vice President of Investor Relations for Northeast Utilities. And what I want to do is introduce some of the folks in the room from our company from NSTAR and NU who will be speaking, and then we'll go to the Safe Harbor and then I'll turn it over to the company CEO.

So let me start, John Valera from NSTAR, who's seating in the front row here. I represent as IR and also financial reporting.NSTAR Treasurer, Phil Lembo is right over here. Randy Shoop, the NU Treasurer is over here. And Sue Weber our Assistant Treasurer is right over there. So again, thank you very much for joining us this early morning. We're really excited about this presentation, and we hope you are as well. I'm just going go through a little bit in terms of the Safe Harbor and this for the folks who are on the webcast because this is being webcast.

This presentation includes statements concerning our expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, strategy, and assumption for future events and future and future financial performance or growth and other statements that are not historic facts. These statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We have some Safe Harbor slides on the merger in the front of the deck and before each company's financial presentation, we also have Safe Harbor in there. So we urge you to take a look of that.

So with that, again, thank you very much, and I just want to turn this presentation now over to Chuck Shivery, NU's Chairman, President and CEO.

Charles Shivery

Jeff, thank you. Thank you for joining us. This is somewhat an early hour. But we have a multi-faceted presentation for you today. We're trying to do a number of things, the first and probably, the foremost, of course, is Tom and I would like to spend a little more time talking about the merger. We had a lot of conversations since we announced it, but there are some questions that some of you have asked. We'll try to hit those head on. Today, but clearly, we'll both be around for a few days and give you the opportunity to talk to us privately, if you'd like.

The second thing is we both had our earnings release is out. You saw that the third quarter for both companies was very good. NU also increased its guidance for 2010. And so, we'll get this later on in the presentation. We'll have Dave Michael and Jim Judge talk a little bit about what for the quarter for each of our companies.

And for NU, I know a lot of you views this morning as a way to get updated on [indiscernible] of the major projects. So when Tom and I just finished talking about the merger and lease, we're going to spend some time give an update on the status of the capital expenditures around some of the major projects. So that's what we're going to try to accomplish today . Please ask questions as it had the opportunity ended like to get this discussion.

So if you go to Page 5. We've spent a lot of time talking to a lot of you privately, but this really is compelling combination. And I would tell you that I have not met anyone that hasn't had logically this makes sense. This strategic for the industrial logic its combination is compelling. We think it's going to be tremendously exciting new company at closure. We talked about closure being nine to 12 months away. You'll here Tom, being, a little bit optimistic about. I ,et's try to do it on the nine-month side. I think we can actually accomplish that, and I think that's where we should be headed. We have a significant transformation opportunity to Nu. We've talked to you about those over the last number of years, and we combined that we the balance strength that we have with NSTAR and the cash flow it allows us to really expand on those projects in a way that is more effective from a financial standpoint.

This new company is larger. It will be the 15th to the 17th largest utility in the country, depending on how you measure it. And it is more diverse and much better position to support the economic growth and renewables in New England. I think and you probably said this before, New England is an inflection point. They've got Reg E Requirements. They've got RPS requirements. And you play those out over the next few years, we need to do something to make that happen. I think there's no company who is going to be positioned in a way that it will be able to help make that happen for the benefit of not only our stockholders but for the benefit of the customers and for the region. This is clearly accretive to earnings in year one, and we think provides not only increased earnings and dividend potential but an enhanced total shareholder return. The service quality capabilities enhanced is the largest customer base in New England. You've seen a map many, many times that shows the low centers in New England, it's Boston, it's Connecticut. As the two companies have a significant portion of that New England population.

And then a highly experienced and complementarity leadership team with a proven track record. You've heard us talk a lot about the similarities of these two companies. We've worked together for a number of years. Restoration, as we've had storms. [indiscernible] NSTAR send crews to our service territories. So we've worked together. We know how that work. And the Hydro-Québec project is just one more example and probably the most used example of the two companies working together. And I think as that proven track record showed, this then becomes the next logical step in that process.

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