OGE Energy Corp. (NYSE:OGE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bryan Buckler: Sure, sure. Constantine, we’re really proud of our 2023 results. It’s phenomenal to be 3% growth again on top of the 3% growth we had in ’22 and the 2.5% growth we had in 2021. And our 2 largest customer segments, residential and commercial, are early in line with what we had for expectations, which were really high. So that’s been a — it’s been a great year for us. Our pipeline of business expansion isn’t just going into 2024, but we see it adding incrementally ’24, ’25, all the way throughout a 5-year forecast period. We have good vision to it really through 2028. And I mentioned this on the last call, but our head of customer sales continues to reiterate to me that our pipeline is as expansive and as strong as he’s ever seen it, perhaps as strong as our company has ever seen. So a great story there, and we look forward to giving you more details in February, but definitely expect it to be above 1% again.

Operator: Our next question comes from Travis Miller with Morningstar.

Travis Miller: I’ll ask the follow-up to the follow-up, if you don’t mind, and maybe even simpler. I know you’re not giving 2024 guidance here. But could you lay out simply the bullet points, either quantitatively, if you will, or qualitatively, that would be the year-over-year types of drivers? Obviously, you talked about load growth. What else is kind of in the mix?

Sean Trauschke : Well, I think primarily, it’s going to be driven by load growth, and we will invest around that load growth. And I mentioned before that we will file — make a filing in Oklahoma, and we’ve made a filing under our formula rate plan in Arkansas. So I would point to those 3 drivers for you.

Travis Miller: Okay. What’s the timing in terms of rate adjustments and your thoughts around getting the Oklahoma case done in terms of 2024 earnings?

Sean Trauschke : Typically, that’s about 180 days. So you would think mid-summer.

Travis Miller: Okay. Great. And then on the holdco level, what’s your sensitivity to interest rates? If you have plus or minus 100 basis points or 50 basis points, about what is that impact on earnings?

Sean Trauschke : Bryan?

Bryan Buckler: Sure. Travis, on the holding company interest, what we’ve pointed to is an expectation that, that could grow $0.03 to $0.04 into next year. But we need to refresh all that. That’s the only guidance we’ve given. That’s a little stale on the guidance front, but that’s not a bad rule of thumb. So we’ll continue to refine that estimate. But again, that’s just one part of a really strong business model for us, which is mostly inclusive of our utility. And we feel, as I mentioned before, very bullish on utility’s growth prospects for all the reasons we’ve talked about today. So give us a little more time, and we’re going to lay out all of this on a consolidated basis for you in February.

Operator: Our next question comes from Tanner James with Bank of America.

Tanner James: Just following up on Constantine’s question on load growth. Within the commercial load bucket, what are you seeing relative to when you issued expectations at the beginning of the year? And are there any items perhaps on the data center front or other large customers that we could look at as potentially providing extended upside relative to your expectations?

Sean Trauschke : Bryan?

Bryan Buckler: Our initial expectations for the commercial segment in ’23 was a growth of 11% to 15%, which is really high growth rate, but also a range there that was pretty expansive, given it’s hard to estimate when some of these large loads are — the exact month they’re going to come in, for example. And we’re kind of right on it. We’re at 13.5% year-to-date. We were 9.5%, 10% in the third quarter year-over-year. So we’ll probably land somewhere around 12% to 13% in commercial for the full year, which is right in the range we expected. As you look to ’24 and beyond, it’s easy to see that that’s going to be really strong growth in ’24 again for commercial. Just the extension of the growth we started in ’22 carried over into ’23.