PG & E CEO Discusses Q3 2010 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
PG & E Corporation (
)
Q3 2010 Earnings Call Transcript
November 4, 2010 11:30 am ET
Executives
Gabe Togneri – VP, IR
Peter Darbee – Chairman, CEO & President
Chris Johns – President, Pacific Gas & Electric Company
Kent Harvey – SVP & CFO
Tom Bottorff – SVP, Regulatory Relations
Dinyar Mistry – VP & Controller
Analysts
Lasan Johong – RBC Capital Markets
Hugh Wynne – Sanford Bernstein
Michael Lapides – Goldman Sachs
Leslie Rich – JPMorgan
Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates
Dan Eggers – Credit Suisse
Jonathan Arnold – Deutsche Bank
Steve Fleishman – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch
Reza Hatefi – Decade Capital
Rudy Tolentino – Morgan Stanley
Ashar Khan – Visium Asset Management
Presentation
Operator
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PG&E Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
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PG&E Corporation Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
Good morning and welcome to the PG&E Corporation third quarter earnings conference call. At this time, I would like to introduce your host, Gabe Togneri, thank you and you may proceed, Mr. Togneri.
Gab
e
Togneri
Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us on our call. Leading our discussion today will be Peter Darbee, our Chairman, CEO, and President of PG&E Corporation; Chris Johns, President of Pacific Gas and Electric company; and Kent Harvey, Senior VP and CFO of the corporation. Other members of the management team as usual are here and available to participate in the Q&A session.
I’ll remind you that the prepared remarks and the Q&A session to follow will include forward-looking statements and these are based on assumptions and expectations that reflect information available to management. Actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
Important factors that may affect our actual results are described in the reports that we file with the SEC, including the risk factors and other factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-Q for the year ended December 31, 2009 and our Form 10-Q reports.
We’ll be filing our third quarter 10-Q report later today. The earnings release we issued this morning is available on our website along with the supplemental earnings tables and including the Regulation G reconciliations. You’ll probably want to have those supplemental tables available, and refer to them as we go through the results for the quarter.
Now, I’ll turn the call over to Peter Darbee.
Peter Darbee
Thanks, Gabe and thank you all to those of you who are on the phone as well as those that are joining us on the webcast this morning. I’d like to begin with a review of the tragedy at San Bruno. On behalf of our whole team company again express our sympathy to the families affected into the broader community.
The night this occurred we pledged that PG&E would do the right thing. Since then we’ve been fully engaged in a broad based effort, and we continue this effort and will continue this effort for as long as it takes to fulfill this commitment.
In our release this morning you can see that we’ve taken a significant charge to account for the cost of this effort and the appropriate liability estimates. We are going to discuss this in more detail shortly, but our principal focus regarding San Bruno remains on three areas, which we’d like to outline.
The first has been providing support and assistance to the people affected. Second, has been taking appropriate steps to ensure that our gas system is safe. Third, has been learning what led to this tragedy, so that we and the industry can prevent something like this from ever happening again.
These priorities have guided everything that we’ve done to-date. Just a few days after the accident, for example, we created Rebuild San Bruno Fund. We made as much as $100 million available to support the residents and the city. These funds are going toward; first, the immediate financial assistance; second, residents’ costs that aren’t covered by their insurance; and thirdly, reimbursing the city for certain expenses.
We’ve also launched a re-inspection of our entire gas transmission system to assure the public of its safety. We recently completed an aerial leak re-survey of all 6,700 miles of transmission mains. By year-end, we will have completed a full on the ground leak survey of these transmission mains.
Additionally, we’ve announced our new Pipeline 2020 program. This puts forth a strategy for raising the bar on our company and our industry, when it comes to pipeline safety.
Lastly, we’ve been cooperating fully with the National Transportation Safety Board and the CPUC in their investigations so that we can all learn the root cause and take any appropriate actions.
Very importantly, in our response to San Bruno, we’ve been communicating regularly with policymakers and regulators and we’ve done so with an ongoing commitment to transparency as we redouble our focus on ensuring public trust and confidence in PG&E’s system.
As we’ve been responding to the San Bruno accident, it has been a central that we run all of our operations with the same focus on delivering for our customers. That includes, moving forward with other key regulatory cases such as our GRC to ensure that we have the resources to deliver clean, safe, and reliable energy.
I’m going to first turn it over to Chris, who will cover some of the additional points on San Bruno and provide you with our operational and regulatory update. And then Kent will cover our financial results for the quarter. Chris?
Chris Johns
Thanks Peter. I’m going to expand on what Peter shared with you regarding our efforts related to San Bruno starting with the NTSB and CPUC activities. I’ll then provide an update on some of our regulatory preceding and finish up with an update on some of our operational items.
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