NorthWestern Corporation (NASDAQ:NWE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Sophie Karp: Okay. All right. We’ll wait. And then my other question was, would you care to comment about the broadview decision? And I guess, the broader question I have is what kind of an impact would interconnect and such facilities have on your already challenged, I guess, power supply costs and I guess the calculation of the avoided cost, is that going to change in your favor, maybe with the addition of Colstrip, other resources? How should we think about this moving forward?

Brian Bird: I think Colstrip certainly helps as we closed that gap and have reduced capacity requirements. Obviously, the broadview decision we’re disappointed in. From our perspective, at the end of the day, this — from an energy perspective with some of these resources, we believe, is customers — it’s energy, our customers don’t necessarily need and certainly at the prices that they ultimately have to pay over the life of these contracts. And it certainly gives us less flexibility as a company to operate our portfolio of resources when more and more of these contracts are part of the mix.

Sophie Karp: All right. Thank you. That’s all from me.

Crystal Lail: Thanks, Sophie.

Travis Meyer: Thanks, Sophie. And I think with that, we’ve exhausted our queue of questions. I hand it back to Brian for any closing remarks you might have.

Brian Bird: It’s my first time of closing remarks. I should have been prepared to say something. Actually, I would just say this. I think we’re very excited about kind of from a tailwind perspective. I know as an industry we’ve got tremendous amount of headwinds in front of us, higher inflation, higher interest costs, higher commodity costs. But as an individual company, I think from the rate case, from how we’re handling our capacity issue with Yellowstone County and Colstrip, and I think the reception we’ve received from the state in terms of some of these decisions we made, I feel as an individual company, we’ve got a lot of tailwinds as well. So extremely excited about 2023 and where this company can go.

Travis Meyer: Thanks, again, for joining us on a Friday afternoon before holiday call. Please feel free to reach out to me personally if you have any questions following the call. And with that, you may now disconnect.