Kirk Crews: Thank you, Kristen, and good morning everyone. NextEra Energy is off to a strong start in 2023. Adjusted earnings per share increased by approximately 13.5% year-over-year building on the success of last year's strong execution and financial performance. During the quarter, we were honored that NextEra Energy was again ranked number one in our sector on Fortune's list of the world's most admired companies for the 16th time in 17 years. We are extremely proud of the team and culture we have built that has enabled us to deliver low-cost clean and reliable power to our customers, while also providing long-term value to our shareholders. FPL is the largest electric utility in the US and Florida is now officially the fastest-growing state in America. At FPL, our focus remains the same deploying smart capital to deliver on what we believe is one of the best customer value propositions in our industry. Key to that strategy is keeping customer bills affordable. And this quarter, we proposed using projected 2023 fuel savings to reduce unbilled fuel costs from 2022 to provide bill relief to customers. To further manage fuel price volatility, we are also helping customers by adding more solar to the FPL grid. This quarter, we placed into service approximately 970 megawatts of new low-cost solar. Putting FPL's owned and operated solar portfolio at nearly 4,600 megawatts, which is the largest solar portfolio of any utility in the country. We believe solar is now the lowest cost generation option for Florida customers, but represents only about 5% of FPL's delivered energy. In order to extend the benefits of low-cost solar to customers, FPL's recently filed 10-year site plan, now includes nearly 20,000 megawatts of new solar. Energy Resources, the world's leader in renewables and a leader in battery storage, remains laser-focused on executing a strategy of decarbonizing the power sector and helping commercial and industrial customers outside the power sector, reduce their energy cost and decarbonize their operations by moving to low-cost renewables and other clean energy solutions. This quarter, Energy Resources added approximately 2,020 megawatts of new renewables and storage projects to its backlog. Energy Resources also closed on its previously announced acquisition of a large portfolio of operating landfill gas-to-electric facilities, providing the foundation for our growing RNG business. We are also excited to announce a new memorandum of understanding with CF Industries to create green hydrogen, establishing what we expect will be a long-term relationship with the world's largest ammonium producer. And finally, Energy Resources continues to build what we believe is the nation's leading competitive transmission business to help support growth in renewables. We are pleased to announce that the California ISO recently recommended for approval approximately $400 million in new transmission and substation upgrades for NextEra Energy Transmission. We believe, NextEra Energy continues to be anchored by two great businesses that leverage each other's expertise to make them even better. We do not believe anyone in our industry has our set of skills, scale and breadth of opportunities. We believe NextEra Energy is able to buy, build operate and finance cheaper with one of the strongest balance sheets in our sector. We also believe our best-in-class development skills and unparalleled data set enable us to provide innovative technology and low-cost clean energy solutions for the benefit of our customers. The opportunities and products demanded by the market are becoming more complex, requiring significant scale and a combination of skills that we believe few of our competitors can offer, further enhancing our competitive advantages and creating even more growth opportunities for our business going forward. We have a culture rooted and continuous improvement, always striving to be better. Along those lines, we just completed our annual employee-led productivity initiative, which we now call Velocity. For over 11 years, our employees have generated approximately $2.6 billion in annual run rate savings ideas, as part of this process. In 2023 alone, our team generated ideas expected to produce roughly $325 million in annual run rate savings, which when combined with last year's results of over $400 million is the most productive two-year period in this program's history and that's after doing it for over a decade. We believe we have the best team in the industry, and these results are indicative of the breadth and depth of capabilities and the commitment to excellence that our team brings to our business every day and executing on behalf of our customers and shareholders. With that let's turn to the detailed results beginning with FPL. For the first quarter of 2023, FPL reported net income of $1.07 billion, or $0.53 per share an increase of $0.09 year-over-year. Regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 11.2% was a significant driver of FPL's EPS growth versus the prior year comparable quarter. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2.3 billion for the quarter. We expect our full year 2023 capital investments at FPL to be between $8.0 billion and $9.0 billion, as we continue to invest capital smartly for the continued benefit of our customers. FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8% for the 12 months ending March 2023. During the quarter, we utilized $373 million of reserve amortization to achieve our targeted regulatory ROE leaving FPL with a balance of $1.07 billion. As we've previously discussed, FPL historically utilizes more reserve amortization in the first half of the year, and we expect this trend to continue this year. Earlier this year, the Florida Public Service Commission approved FPL's proposed plan to recover approximately $2.1 billion of incremental fuel costs from 2022 partially offset by projected 2023 fuel savings of approximately $1.4 billion. Amid high natural gas prices in 2022, FPL's decades-long modernization of its generation fleet has saved customers more than $2 billion in fuel costs in 2022 alone. The commission also recently approved recovery of approximately $1.3 billion of hurricane costs from 2022 over a 12-month period. Taking all approved adjustments together, we anticipate that FPL's typical 1,000 kilowatt hour residential customer bills will remain well below the projected national average and among the lowest of all Florida utilities. Turning to our development planning and efforts. FPL recently filed its annual 10-year site plan that presents our generation resource plan for the next decade. The 2023 plan includes roughly 20,000 megawatts of new low-cost solar capacity across our service territory over the next 10 years, which would result in nearly 35% of FPL's forecasted energy delivery in 2032 coming from cost-effective solar generation up significantly from roughly 5% in 2022. Given the increasing customer benefits of low-cost renewables FPL's post-2025 solar capacity additions and this year's plan are more than double last year's approved plan and also includes 2 gigawatts of battery storage over the next decade. We believe the expansion of cost-effective solar and storage will provide a valuable hedge for our customers against volatile natural gas prices and meet the electricity demand of FPL's growing customer base with a low-cost generation source. Finally, construction of our green hydrogen pilot at our Okeechobee Clean Energy Center is on track and projected to go into service later this year. Turning now to the Florida economy. Florida became the fastest-growing state in the nation in 2022 and its population continues to increase with over 1,000 people moving to Florida every day. Over the last five years, Florida's GDP has grown at a roughly 7% compound annual growth rate and is now approximately $1.4 trillion which is up approximately 8% versus a year ago. Based on GDP, if Florida was a country, it would have the 14th largest economy in the world. FPL's first quarter retail sales increased 0.4% from the prior year comparable period driven by continued solid underlying population growth with FPL's average number of customers increasing by approximately 65,000, even after removing roughly 15,000 inactive customers due to Hurricane Ian. For the first quarter, we estimate that the positive impact of warmer weather was more than offset by a decline in underlying usage for our customers. As we have often pointed out, underlying usage can be somewhat volatile on a quarterly basis, particularly during periods when temperatures deviate significantly from normal, as we experienced this winter with average temperatures greater than four degrees above normal. Our long-term expectations of underlying usage growth continues to average between zero and approximately negative 0.5% per year. Energy Resources report first quarter 2023 GAAP earnings of approximately $1.440 billion or $0.72 per share. Adjusted earnings for the first quarter were $732 million or $0.36 per share up $0.04 versus the prior year comparable period. Contributions from new investments increased $0.07 per share year-over-year. Contributions from our existing Clean Energy portfolio were lower by $0.03 per share primarily due to less favorable wind and solar resource compared to the prior year. The contribution from our customer supply and trading business increased by $0.06 per share primarily due to higher margin in our customer-facing business and compared to a relatively weaker contribution in the prior year comparable quarter. Gas infrastructure and all other impacts reduced earnings by $0.01 and $0.05 per share respectively versus 2022. Energy Resources had another strong quarter of origination capitalizing on strong global demand environment. Since the last call, we added approximately 2020 megawatts of new renewables and storage projects to our backlog including roughly 1370 megawatts of solar, 450 megawatts of storage and 200 megawatts of wind. With these additions, our renewables and storage backlog now stands at over 20.4 gigawatts net of projects placed in service and provides strong visibility into our future growth. With more than 1.5 years remaining before the end of 2024, we are now within the 2023 to 2024 development expectations range. Given the volatility in gas and power prices over the last 1.5 years, we continue to see economics driving long-term decision-making and renewables remain the clear low-cost option for many customers. On the supply -- solar supply chain front, we continue to take constructive steps to mitigate potential future disruption. Nearly every one of our suppliers has repositioned their supply chains to manufacture solar panels in Southeast Asia using wafers and cells produced outside of China, and all our suppliers are expected to meet the criteria established in the Commerce Department's preliminary determination in the 2022 circumvention case by the end of 2023. Additionally, we are focused on further diversifying our supply chain and are currently advancing discussions to support the domestic production of solar panels. Finally, we are encouraged by the improvement in the flow of panels into the US as suppliers continue to provide the requested traceability documentation to US Customs and Border Protection. Also, during the quarter, we closed on the previously announced transaction to acquire a large portfolio of operating landfill gas-to-electric facilities that I mentioned earlier. The approximately $1.1 billion transaction represents an attractive opportunity for energy resources to realize double-digit returns on this investment, while expanding its portfolio of renewable natural gas assets and growing its in-house capabilities and rapidly expanding renewable fuel market. Turning to green hydrogen, we are excited about the role it is expected to play as a solution to help our customers cost effectively lower emissions. As the world leader in renewables and a leader in battery storage, we believe we are the logical partner for green hydrogen with significant interconnection and land inventory positions and deep market expertise to help our potential partners optimize some of the best green hydrogen sites around the country. As a result, with the right regulation, we see hydrogen quickly becoming a significant technology for our customers and a new growth driver for energy resources given the number and size of the opportunities we are evaluating. Earlier this month, NextEra Energy joined a coalition of 45 other companies with a combined approximately $1 trillion in market capitalization and sending a letter to the Secretaries of Energy & Treasury and the White House advocating for programmatic policies for the implementation of the IRAs green hydrogen production tax credit. This coalition is advocating for prudent policy that will foster investment in green hydrogen technology paving the way for the US to become the world leader in hydrogen technology. A key aspect of this policy is for the electricity consumed for green hydrogen production to be matched to its renewable power generation on an annual rather than an hourly basis. We believe that an annual matching construct has several benefits over hourly including lower green hydrogen prices, more renewables being built, a significant reduction in carbon emissions, and green hydrogen achieving cost parity with gray and blue hydrogen both of which rely on fossil fuels for their production. This viewpoint is supported by numerous third-party studies from respected entities such as Wood Mackenzie, Rhodium Group, Energy Futures Initiative, Energy and Environmental Economics, and MIT Energy Institute. As we continue to work with the industry and government representatives to progress a smart hydrogen policy, we are also advancing our green hydrogen development efforts including a recently executed Memorandum of Understanding for a joint venture with CF Industries, the world's largest producer of ammonia to develop -- to deliver green hydrogen to an existing CF Industries ammonia production facility which it intends to expand and incorporate green hydrogen into its production process. The proposed facility includes an approximately 450-megawatt renewable energy solution, powering a 40 tons per day hydrogen facility. This project combined with other opportunities we are pursuing represent significant momentum for green hydrogen, which we believe will continue to be a driver of new renewables growth going forward. Our team continues to engage with multiple potential partners and customers on hydrogen projects, representing over $20 billion of capital investments and requiring more than 15 gigawatts of new renewables to support. As we focus on leading the decarbonization of the US economy, building additional transmission is essential to support long-term renewables deployment. We believe our ability to build, own and operate transmission as a key competitive advantage for our renewables business, in addition to being a terrific investment opportunity. We are pleased that the California ISO recently recommended for approval of approximately $400 million in transmission and substation upgrades for NextEra Energy Transmission, subject to approval by the CAISO Board of Governors in May. We believe these projects along with others could unlock up to 11 gigawatts of new renewable generation that could be built to support California's ambitious clean energy goals. Turning now to the consolidated results for NextEra Energy. For the first quarter of 2023 GAAP earnings attributable to NextEra Energy were $2.086 billion or $1.04 per share. NextEra Energy's 2023 first quarter adjusted earnings and adjusted EPS were approximately $1.678 billion and $0.84 per share respectively. Adjusted earnings for the Corporate and Other segment decreased results by $0.03 per share year-over-year, primarily driven by higher interest rates. In March, S&P affirmed all its ratings for NextEra Energy and lowered its downgrade threshold for its funds from operations or FFO to debt metric from the previous level of 20% to the current level of 18%. In making this favorable adjustment, S&P acknowledged improvement in Energy Resources business risk following the passage of the IRA, particularly noting the improved visibility and clarity into long-term cash flows. At the same time, S&P adjusted its treatment of non-recourse project debt associated with FERC Regulated investments to bring it back on credit. We believe this overall favorable adjustment, which creates roughly 50 bps of additional headroom against the downgrade threshold, highlights the attractive risk profile of renewables and acknowledges the long-term stable cash flows and Energy Resources business, particularly given the benefits of the IRA. Finally as we have discussed in the past, we actively enter into various interest rate swaps products to manage interest rate exposure on future debt issuance. Today, we have $21 billion of interest rate swaps at NextEra Energy to help mitigate the impact of potential future increases in rates, which exceeds the notional value of our 2023 and 2024 maturities. And as always, the current interest rate environment is taken into account in our financial expectations. Our long-term financial expectations which we extended earlier this year through 2026 remain unchanged. And we will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in each year from 2023 to 2026, while at the same time maintaining our strong balance sheet and credit ratings. From 2021 to 2026, we also continue to expect that our average annual growth in operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. We also continue to expect to grow our dividends per share at roughly 10% per year through at least 2024 off a 2022 base. As always, our expectations assume our usual caveats including normal weather and operating conditions. Turning to NextEra Energy Partners. We believe, we have never had more visible growth opportunities than we have today. We have the ability to grow in three ways: acquiring assets from Energy Resources, growing organically and buying assets from other third parties. With significant tailwinds from the IRA, Energy Resources' operating portfolio, combined with its backlog of projects and development expectations through 2026, total approximately 58 gigawatts, providing terrific visibility for NextEra Energy Partners and Energy Resources is continuing to grow in innovative ways, adding new technologies and clean energy assets to its portfolio, such as RNG and hydrogen. In addition to acquiring assets from Energy Resources, NextEra Energy Partners also has the ability to repower its existing assets, with approximately 1,300 megawatts of potential wind repowerings, already identified, and many more opportunities expected to come, as well as potential to locate storage at its existing renewable assets, given the new stand-alone storage ITC. Finally, there are significant acquisition opportunities with renewable portfolios, continuously being brought to market. NextEra Energy Partners also has numerous ways that can finance this growth and we believe, it can do so efficiently, given its ample liquidity and access to capital. At the end of the first quarter, NextEra Energy Partners had $2.8 billion of liquidity and approximately $6 billion of interest rate swaps to manage future interest rate volatility on debt maturities through 2026. With regard to convertible equity portfolio financing, we can fund equity buyouts by delivering common units or utilizing our at-the-market or ATM program or a combination of both and we believe we have ample liquidity to fund cash payments. Importantly, we have flexibility and we expect to leverage this flexibility to manage future buyouts to select the most efficient option. Using this flexibility, NextEra Energy Partners has now bought out 50% of the STX Midstream convertible equity portfolio financing through funds generated from a combination of the ATM program, where NextEra Energy Partners was able to be opportunistic and cash from a subsidiary's revolving credit facility. With the buyouts of the 2018 convertible equity portfolio financing and 50% of the STX Midstream convertible equity portfolio financing complete, we estimate that the convertible equity portfolio financing structure has resulted in approximately 55% and 64% respectively or 16 million fewer units being issued, compared to raising capital with underwritten block equity, all for the benefit of unitholders. For the balance of the year, files are now expected to be limited to the remaining 50% of the STX Midstream convertible equity [ph] portfolio financing and 15% of the net renewables to convertible equity portfolio financing with the equity portion of these buyouts requiring common units of approximately $280 million and $130 million respectively. Over the next eight months, we have flexibility and time to opportunistically manage these buyouts in the most efficient way. For each buyout, we have the flexibility to deliver common units to the convertible equity portfolio financing investor, utilize the ATM program or some combination of the two. Ultimately, we will select the most efficient option. In any event, the potential unit issuance from these buyouts are not expected to exceed an average of three days of total trading volume per quarter, which we expect will make them quite manageable. Most importantly, NextEra Energy Partners' growth expectations through 2026 already factor in its financing plan, including convertible equity portfolio financing buyouts at current trading yields. Turning to distribution growth. Yesterday the NextEra Energy Partners Board declared a quarterly distribution of $0.8425 per common unit or $3.37 per common unit on an annualized basis, up approximately 15% from a year earlier. Inclusive of this quarter, NextEra Energy Partners has grown its LP distribution per unit up nearly 350% since the IPO. Today we are pleased to announce that NextEra Energy Partners has entered into an agreement with Energy Resources to acquire an approximately 690-megawatt portfolio of long-term contracted operating wind and solar projects and attractive cash available for distribution yield. The high-quality portfolio has a cash available for distribution, weighted average remaining contract life of approximately 16 years, an average customer credit rating of BBB at S&P and Baa2 at Moody's Investors Service. NextEra Energy Partners is expected to acquire the portfolio for approximately $708 million, subject to closing adjustments and is inclusive of the portfolio's existing project debt and interest rate swaps which are estimated to be approximately $142 million. In addition to the approximately $708 million purchase price, NextEra Energy Partners is also expected to assume the portfolio's existing tax equity financing balance. The remaining purchase price is expected to be funded by a combination of new project finance debt and the corporate revolving credit facility. The portfolio of assets is expected to contribute adjusted EBITDA of approximately $110 million to $130 million and cash available for distribution prior to the existing project debt service of approximately $62 million to $72 million, each on a five-year average annual run rate basis, beginning December 31 2023. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year. Additional details on the portfolio of assets to be acquired by NextEnergy Partners can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. Next Energy Partners will remain opportunistic pursuing acquisitions in 2023. And with the closing of the transaction announced today, NextEnergy Partners expects to be well positioned to meet its year-end 2023 adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution run rate expectations. Turning to the detailed results. NextEra Energy Partners delivered first quarter adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution results in line with management's expectations. Adjusted EBITDA of $447 million increased by $35 million versus the prior year, driven primarily by favorable contributions from the approximately 1,200 net megawatts of new projects acquired in 2022. Both adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distributions were negatively affected by lower resource from existing projects. Additionally, cash available from distribution was lower versus the prior year comparable period due to incremental debt service and timing of payable payments. Looking forward in the second half of 2023, we expect strong double-digit growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution to support NextEra Energy Partners, distribution per unit growth expectation range of 12% to 15% for the full year 2023. Additional details are shown on the accompanying slide. NextEra Energy Partners continues to expect run rate contributions for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distributions from its forecasted portfolio at December 31, 2023, to be in the ranges of $2.22 billion to $2.42 billion and $770 million to $860 million respectively. As a reminder, year-end 2023 run rate projections reflect calendar year 2024 contribution from the forecasted portfolio at year-end 2023 and include the impact of IDR fees, which we treat as an operating expense. As always, our expectations are subject to our usual caveats including normal weather and operating conditions. From a base of our fourth quarter 2022 distribution per common unit at an annualized rate of $3.25, we continue to see 12% to 15% growth per year in LP distributions as being a reasonable range of expectations through at least 2026. We continue to remain comfortable with these growth expectations. And in fact even at the current trade yield, Energy Resources portfolio alone is just one way NextEra Energy Partners believes it can meet its growth expectations through 2026. For 2023, we expect the annualized rate of the fourth quarter 2023 distribution that is payable in February 2024 to be in a range of $3.64 to $3.74 per common unit. We also continue to expect to achieve our 2023 distribution growth of 12% to 15%. In summary, we continue to believe that both NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners are well-positioned to continue delivering on their long-term growth prospects. At FPL that means executing on smart capital investments to deliver on its customer value proposition of low bills, high reliability and outstanding customer service. At Energy Resources that means leading the decarbonization of both the power sector and non-power sector and leveraging its competitive advantages to capitalize on low-cost renewals and new emerging technologies like green hydrogen. In NextEra Eneregy Partners, we expect to capitalize on its unmatched growth visibility to further expand its best-in-class clean energy portfolio to provide long-term distribution growth for unit holders. With that, we are happy to address your questions.

reserve amortization FPL targeted regulatory ROE


Kirk Crews: Thanks Kristin and good morning. NextEra Energy delivered strong third-quarter results, growing adjusted earnings per share approximately 10.6% year-over-year. In the quarter, FPL continued to deliver outstanding value to its customers in what we believe has been one of the most constructive regulatory jurisdictions in the nation. FPL's bills are well below the national average, and we are relentlessly focused on reliability and running the business efficiently. Energy Resources extended its leadership position in renewable energy during the third quarter with strong adjusted earnings growth and its best renewables and storage origination quarter in its history. NextEra Energy has clear growth visibility through FPL's capital plan and Energy Resources' over 21 gigawatt renewables and storage backlog. With the strongest balance sheets in the sector and worldwide banking relationships, we believe NextEra Energy has both significant access to capital and cost-of-capital advantages and is well positioned to continue to deliver long-term value for shareholders. Now let's turn to FPL's detailed results. For the third quarter of 2023, FPL's earnings per share increased $0.04 year-over-year. The principal driver of this performance was FPL's regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 13.6% year-over-year. We continue to expect FPL to realize roughly 9% average annual growth in regulatory capital employed over our current rate agreement's four-year term, which runs through 2025. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2.6 billion for the quarter, and we expect FPL's full-year 2023 capital investments to be between $9 billion and $9.5 billion. For the 12 months ending September 2023, FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8%. During the third quarter, we reversed roughly $245 million of reserve amortization, leaving FPL with a balance of over $1.2 billion. Over the current four-year settlement agreement, we continue to expect FPL to make capital investments of between $32 billion to $34 billion. Our capital investment plan is well-established and focused on enhancing what we believe is one of the best customer value propositions in the industry. Key indicators show that the Florida economy remains healthy and Florida continues to be one of the fastest-growing states in the country. FPL's third-quarter retail sales increased 3% from the prior year-comparable period due to warmer weather, which had a positive year-over-year impact on usage for customer of approximately 2%. As a result, FPL observed solid underlying growth in third quarter retail sales of roughly 1% on a weather normalized basis. Now let's turn to energy resources, which reported adjusted earnings growth of approximately 21% year-over-year. Contributions from new investments increased $0.11 per share year-over-year, while our existing clean energy portfolio declined $0.02 per share, which includes the impact of weaker year-over-year wind resource. The comparative contribution from our customer supply and trading and gas infrastructure businesses increased by $0.04 per share and $0.01 per share respectively. All other impacts reduced earnings by $0.08 per share. This decline reflects higher interest costs by $0.06 per share, half of which is driven by new borrowing costs to support new investments. Energy resources had a record quarter of new renewables and storage origination at approximately 3,245 megawatts to the backlog, which is the first time we have exceeded three gigawatts in a single quarter. Although we will remind you that signings can be lumpy quarter-to-quarter, we do believe this is a terrific sign of strong underlying demand for new renewable generation. With these additions, our backlog now totals over 21 gigawatts after taking into account roughly 1,025 megawatts of new projects placed into service since our second quarter call. We also removed roughly 1,180 megawatts from our backlog, including roughly 800 megawatts of projects in New York following an adverse decision by NYSERDA two weeks ago. We are optimistic that these projects will ultimately move forward, but are removing them from backlog for now. The remaining megawatts were removed due to permitting challenges. Overall, we remain on track to achieve our renewable development expectations of roughly 33 gigawatts to 42 gigawatts through 2026. This quarter's backlog additions include roughly 455 megawatts to repower existing wind facilities, which includes energy resources share of approximately 740 megawatts of repowers within the NextEra Energy Partners portfolio, which I'm going to discuss in a few minutes. As a reminder, in a repower, we invest roughly 50% to 80% of the cost of a new build, are able to refresh and enhance the performance of the turbine equipment, and start a new 10 years of production tax credits, collectively resulting in attractive returns. Energy Resources has previously repowered roughly 6 gigawatts of its approximately 23 gigawatt operating wind portfolio, and we believe we will be able to repower much of our existing wind portfolio in the coming years. Also included in the backlog additions are roughly 250 megawatts of standalone battery storage projects co-located with existing wind and solar facilities. The combination of the standalone storage tax credit and the ability to utilize existing interconnection capacity from our operating renewables and storage footprint positions us well to serve our customers' growing needs for capacity. Turning now to our third quarter 2023 consolidated results, adjusted earnings from corporate and other decreased by $0.01 per share year-over-year. Our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in each year from 2023 through 2026. From 2021 to 2026, we continue to expect that our average annual growth and operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range, and we continue to expect to grow our dividends per share at roughly 10% per year for at least 2024 off a 2022 base. As always, our expectations are subject to our caveats. Going forward, we plan to fund the business in a manner similar to how we have historically done so at both FPL and Energy Resources. This includes utilizing cash flow from operations for roughly half of our funding needs, in addition to tax equity, project finance, and corporate debt. The sale of tax credits is serving as a new source of capital funding for NextEra Energy. We expect to transfer roughly $400 million in tax credits in 2023 and expect this amount to grow over the next couple of years to approximately $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion in 2026. This dynamic has reduced NextEra Energy's capital recycling needs, including those previously met via sales to NextEra Energy partners, which has historically averaged roughly $1 billion of annual cash proceeds. Let me address future equity issuances specifically. Our balance sheet and financial discipline remain core to our strategy. As we find attractive investments for our customers and shareholders, we expect to fund those investments in a way that maintains the strength of our balance sheet. As a reminder, over the last five years, we have issued roughly $1.5 billion annually on average of equity in the form of equity units. We do not expect to issue any equity for the balance of 2023 and expect our year-end credit metrics to exceed those specified by the agencies to support our current ratings. From 2024 through 2026, we would expect our total equity needs to be no more than $3 billion in total with continued reliance on equity units to satisfy our equity needs, which have no dilution for the first three years. We believe FPL and Energy Resources are well-positioned to manage interest rate volatility in the current environment. At FPL, we primarily rely on the surplus mechanism to offset higher interest rates for the benefit of customers. In addition, FPL's rate agreement already provided for an ROE adjustment to 11.8%, enabling it to earn a higher ROE in the current higher rate environment. We expect that FPL will be able to absorb much and potentially all of the cumulative effects of the current interest rate environment through the use of the surplus mechanism over the remaining settlement period. Consistent with the expiration of the current rate agreement, FPL expects to file a rate case in early 2025 for new rates effective 2026. For Energy Resources and corporate and other, we now have $20.5 billion of interest rate hedges in place. While the amounts vary as we add and settle hedges, the tenor of the swaps are between five years and ten years and have a weighted average rate of roughly 3.75%. Swaps allow us to mitigate the impact of interest rate changes on energy resources backlog returns and capital holdings $12.8 billion of debt maturities from 2024 through 2026. Specifically, these swaps allow us to hedge the project-level debt funding we expect to issue on our renewables backlog as well as a portion of the $12.8 billion of the term maturities. To put this all in perspective, NextEra Energy's sensitivity for an immediate 50 basis point upward shift in the yield curve has essentially no expected adjusted EPS impact on 2023 and 2024 and has on average $0.03 to $0.05 of expected adjusted EPS impact in 2025 and 2026, which is equivalent to approximately 1% of our adjusted EPS expectations. This sensitivity, of course, assumes we do not implement other offsetting initiatives, including among others, our normal process of cost reductions and capital efficiency opportunities. Our backlog is in good shape and is benefiting from our interest rate swaps, global supply chain management capabilities, and the ability to procure equipment, materials and balance of plant services at scale across our portfolio. The expected returns on equity for our backlog are mid-teens for solar and over 20 for wind and storage. As we have done historically, we price our power purchase agreements commensurate with current market conditions, including our current cost of capital in order to maintain appropriate returns. In addition, at the time of our final investment decision, before we commit significant capital to our backlog projects, we are utilizing interest rate swaps on contracts that we were entered into when rates were lower to maintain our return expectations. We remain financially disciplined and pass on projects that don't meet our return expectations. Going forward, we are encouraged by the trends we are seeing in lower equipment pricing for solar panels and batteries, given increased competition globally, and declining prices for materials, which we believe will help offset the impacts of higher interest rates on power purchase agreement prices. We are optimistic that demand will remain resilient due to the factors you all know well, including the continued cost competitiveness of renewable energy, relative to alternative forms of generation. Importantly to date, demand has remained strong, as evidenced by our substantial new additions to backlog this quarter. Now let's turn to NextEra Energy Partners. As a reminder, the partnership is a financing vehicle that grows its distribution by acquiring assets with long-term contracted high-quality cash flows and financing those acquisitions at low cost. Over the years, NextEra Energy Partners has been able to rely on low-cost financing to help drive its distribution growth. To meet its financing needs in recent years, the partnership has relied primarily on convertible equity portfolio financing that have a low cash coupon during their term and convert into equity over time. A significant amount of the equity required to be issued to buy out these financings began coming due this year and over the next several years, which we believe contributed to the partnership's trading yield almost doubling at the same time interest rates were rising. Consequently, the partnership's cost of capital increased, which made it difficult to support a 12% growth rate in a way that is sustainable and in the best interest of unit holders over the long term. By reducing the growth rate to 6%, NextEra Energy Partners LP distribution rate is now comparable to its peers, and the partnership does not expect to require growth equity until 2027. In order to meet these objectives, the partnership is focused on first executing against its transition plan. As a reminder, the transition plans include successfully entering into agreement to sell the Texas natural gas pipeline portfolio and natural gas pipeline assets this year and in 2025, respectively. Doing so will enable the partnership to address the equity buyouts associated with the FPL's midstream, the 2019 NEP pipelines and NEP renewables to convertible equity portfolio financing through 2025. Through the period of our current financial expectations, that would leave a small equity buyout of roughly $147 million on the genesis holding convertible equity portfolio financing in 2026. The partnership is continuing its process to sell the Texas pipeline portfolio and expects to have an update on or before our fourth quarter call in January. NextEra Energy Partners is focused on executing against its growth plan for unit holders. That plan involves organic growth, specifically repowering of approximately 1.3 gigawatts of wind projects, as well as acquiring assets from energy resources or third parties at favorable yields. Importantly, NextEra Energy Partners does not expect to need an acquisition in 2024 to meet the 6% growth in distributions per unit target. Today, we're announcing plans to repower approximately 740 megawatts of wind facilities through 2026, which require the final approval of the customer's [ph] board of directors, which is expected to be received in the near term. The repowerings are projected to generate attractive CAFD yields and the partnership expects to fund the repowerings with either tax equity or project-specific debt. Repowerings represent an efficient way to support the partnership's growth targets. Overall, we are pleased with this progress and remain focused on executing additional repowering opportunities in the future across NextEra Energy Partners' roughly 8-gigawatt wind portfolio. To minimize the volatility associated with the changes in interest rates and support the growth plan, the partnership also executed roughly $1.9 billion to hedge refinancing costs for the 2024 and 2025 maturities. The resulting expected refinancing costs of the maturities are factored into our expectations. Turning to the detailed results, NextEra Energy Partners' third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $488 million and cash available for distribution was $247 million. New projects, which primarily reflect contributions from approximately 1,100 net megawatts of new long-term contracted renewable projects acquired in 2022 and the approximately the 690 net megawatts of new projects that closed in the second quarter of this year, contributed approximately $66 million of adjusted EBITDA and $32 million of cash available for distribution. The third quarter adjusted EBITDA contribution from existing projects increased by approximately $5 million year-over-year. Third quarter results for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distributions were positively impacted by the incentive distribution rights fee suspension and provided approximately $39 million of benefit this quarter, more than offsetting the cash available for distribution impacts of lower pay-go payments driven by lower wind resource at existing projects. Yesterday, NextEra Energy Partners' board declared a quarterly distribution of 86.75 cents per common unit or $3.47 per common unit on an annualized basis, which reflects an annualized increase of 6% from its second quarter 2023 distribution per common unit. From a base of our second quarter 2023 distribution per common unit at an annualized rate of $3.42, we continue to see 5% to 8% growth per unit per year in LP distributions per unit, with a current target of 6% growth per year, being a reasonable range of expectations through at least 2026. For 2023, we expect an annualized rate for the fourth quarter 2023 distribution that is payable in February of 2024 to be $3.52 per common unit. NextEra Energy Partners expects run rate contributions for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distributions from its forecasted portfolio at December 31, 2023 to be in the range of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion and $730 million to $820 million, respectively. As a reminder, year-end 2023 run rate projections reflect calendar year 2024 contributions from the forecasted portfolio at year-end 2023. The adjusted EBITDA and related cash available for distributions associated with the Texas Pipeline portfolio have been excluded from these run rate financial expectations. As always, our expectations are subject to our caveat. While NextEra Energy Partners navigates through this current environment, it's important not to lose sight of the value of the underlying portfolio. NextEra Energy Partners is the seventh largest producer of electricity from the wind and the sun in the world, with over 10 gigawatts of renewables in operation. The partnership owns renewable projects that deliver high-quality cash flows in 30 states, serving 94 customers with an average counterparty credit rating of BBB plus via contracts with an average remaining contract life of 14 years. We remain optimistic the partnership can be an attractive vehicle to own existing renewable assets over the long term. We want the partnership to be successful, and separately, to address a question we've been receiving from some investors, NextEra Energy has no plans to buy back NextEra Energy Partners. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

reserve amortization reversal third quarter


Brian Bolster: Thanks, John. Let's begin with FPL's detailed results. For the full year 2024, FPL's adjusted earnings per share increased $0.12 versus 2023. The principal driver of FPL's 2024 full year performance was regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 10%. We continue to expect FPL's average annual growth in regulatory capital employed to be roughly 10% over the four year term of our current rate agreement, which runs through 2025. For the full year 2024, FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.4%. During the full year 2024, we used $328 million of reserve amortization, leaving FPL with a year end 2024 balance of $895 million. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing its full year capital investments to a total of roughly $8.2 billion. Key indicators show that the Florida economy remains strong and Florida's population continues to be one of the fastest growing in the country. Its GDP is now roughly $1.7 trillion, an increase of approximately 7% over last year. For the fourth quarter of 2024, FPL's retail sales increased 1.1% from the prior year on a weather normalized basis, driven primarily by continued strong customer growth. In the fourth quarter of 2024, we added nearly 119,000 customers as compared to the prior year comparable quarter, bringing our total customer accounts to over 6 million. For the full year 2024, FPL's retail sales increased 1.9% from the prior year on a weather normalized basis, also driven primarily by the strong customer growth in our service territory. As John mentioned, FPL is preparing to file a base rate case proposal that would cover the four years beginning 2026 through 2029 and provide customers longer term visibility to the cost of electricity. As a reminder, for the period 2022 through the end of 2025, FPL plans to invest approximately $36 billion with additional significant investments expected in 2026 and beyond to continue to meet the growing needs of Florida's economy. This capital will allow FPL to continue delivering outstanding value for Florida customers by keeping reliability high and fuel and other costs as low as possible. While the benefit of building a stronger, smarter grid and a cleaner, more efficient generation fleet are passed along regularly to customers, through higher service reliability and lower bills, we must periodically seek recovery for these long-term investments through base rates. While the details are still being finalized, we expect the proposal to include base rate adjustments of approximately $1.55 billion starting in January of 2026 and $930 million starting in January of 2027. We also expect the proposal to request support for continued deployment of low cost generation and capacity additions and the continuation of our solar and battery base rate adjustment or SoBRA mechanism to recover the revenue requirements of these cost effective projects. FPL plans to propose an ROE midpoint at 11.9% with an allowed ROE band of plus or minus 1%. The 11.9% estimated cost of equity reflects appreciably higher interest rates and other capital markets factors we have experienced since our last rate case and which we expect to continue during the term of the proposed four year rate plan. FPL also expects to propose maintaining FPL's long standing equity ratio approved in prior base rate cases, which is intended to keep it in a position to continue to access capital as needed through 2029. We continue to believe that a strong balance sheet, which starts with an appropriate equity layer and which supports strong credit ratings remains critical to ensure FPL maintains uninterrupted access to the capital markets, even in times of significant market disruption. It also allows us to attract capital to support the investments FPL is making to further improve the value we offer customers. FPL estimates that its proposal, along with the projections for fuel and other costs, will grow a typical residential customer bill by an average annual rate of approximately 2.5% from January 2025 through 2029. If the full amount of the requests were granted under our proposal and assuming other utilities experienced bill increases only at their historical rates of increase, we expect FPL's typical customer bills will continue to remain significantly lower than the national average through 2029. To put this proposal in context, it would result in a typical customer bill in January 2026 that is nearly 21% less than it was in real terms 20 years ago, even with our proposed base rate increases. We look forward to the opportunity to present the details of our case and expect to make our formal filing with testimony and required detailed data in February. The timeline for proceeding will ultimately be determined by the commission, but we currently expect that we will have hearings in the third quarter and a final commission decision in the fourth quarter in time for new rates to go in effect in January of 2026. We're open to the possibility of resolving our rate request through a fair settlement agreement. During the course of the past 22 years, FPL has entered into five multi-year settlement agreements that have provided customers with a high degree of rate stability and certainty and helped FPL execute to deliver its best-in-class customer value proposition. Our core focus will be to pursue a fair and objective review of our case that supports continued execution of our successful strategy for customers and we plan to continue to provide updates throughout the process. Now let's turn to Energy Resources, which reported full year adjusted earnings growth of more than 13% year-over-year. For the full year, contributions from new investments increased by $0.48 per share, reflecting continued growth of demand for our renewables and storage portfolio. Contributions from existing clean energy assets increased by $0.03 per share, primarily reflecting improved wind resource during the year and the impact of certain revenue and PTC escalation benefits inherent in our existing assets. Contributions from our gas infrastructure business decreased by $0.08 per share, most of which was recognized in the second quarter. As we discussed at the time, a combination of higher depletion expense related to an expectation for lower production, certain non-recurring items and the sale of the Texas pipeline portfolio resulted in lower relative earnings in that quarter. Contributions since that time have been effectively flat, consistent with the expectations we provided in the second quarter. Our customer supply and trading business, which you will recall, had a strong earnings in 2023, decreased results by $0.04 per share, driven by normalization of origination activity and margins, which is consistent with our expectations. Other impacts decreased results by $0.24 per share year-over-year. This decline reflects higher interest cost of $0.13 per share, nearly half of which is new borrowing to support our build and half of which reflects increased borrowing costs on existing debt. Energy Resources, again, for the third year in a row delivered our best year ever for origination, adding more than 12 gigawatts of new renewables and battery storage projects to our backlog, which includes approximately 3.3 gigawatts since our last call. Our 2024 origination performance reflects continued strong demand from power and commercial and industrial customers looking for the least cost alternative to serve load and meet increasing demand. Our renewables backlog now stands at more than 25 gigawatts after taking into account roughly 2.4 gigawatts of new projects placed into service since our third quarter call. We believe our more than 25 gigawatt backlog provides terrific visibility into Energy Resources' ability to deliver attractive growth in years ahead. Turning now to the consolidated results for NextEra Energy. For the full year, adjusted earnings per share from our Corporate and Other segment decreased by $0.01 per share year-over-year. We successfully supported the growth in our underlying businesses from our strong operating cash flows and grew 2024 cash flow from operations by more than 17%, well in excess of adjusted earnings. We also continue to focus on protecting our project economics at Energy Resources as well as minimizing the cost of refinancing at the parent. We now have $28.5 billion of interest rate hedges in place. To put this all in perspective, NextEra Energy's sensitivity for an immediate 50 basis point upward shift in the yield curve has on average $0.01 to $0.03 of expected adjusted EPS impact in 2025, 2026 and 2027, which is equivalent to less than 1% of our adjusted EPS expectations. The sensitivity, of course, assumes we do not implement other offsetting initiatives, including, among others, our normal process of cost reductions and capital efficiency opportunities. As a reminder, the current interest rate environment is taking into account in our financial expectations. Overall, our funding plans for 2024 through 2027 remain consistent with the information we shared previously. For each of the last 15 years, NextEra Energy has met or exceeded its financial expectations, which is a record we're proud of. And once again our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we're not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in 2025, 2026 and 2027. From 2023 to 2027, we continue to expect that our average annual growth and operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. And we will also continue to expect to grow our dividends per share at roughly 10% per year through at least 2026 off a 2024 base. As always, our expectations assume our caveats. That concludes our prepared remarks. And with that, we will open the line for questions.


Kirk Crews: Thank you, John. For the first quarter of 2024, FPL's earnings per share increased $0.04 year over year. The principal driver of this performance was FPL's regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 11.5% year-over-year. We now expect FPL to realize roughly 10% average annual growth in regulatory capital employed over our current rate agreements four-year term, which runs through 2025. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2.3 billion for the quarter and we expect FPL's full year 2024 capital investments to be between $7.8 billion and $8.8 billion. For the twelve months ending March 2024 FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8%. During the first quarter, we utilized approximately $572 million of reserve amortization, leaving FPL with a balance of roughly $651 million. As we've previously discussed, FPL historically utilizes more reserve amortization in the first half of the year, and we expect this trend to continue this year. Earlier this month, FPL received approval to reduce customer bills due to projected 2024 fuel savings. As a result, FPL's typical 1000 kilowatt hour residential customer bill is expected to be roughly $14 lower in May than the start of the year and approximately 37% lower than the current national average. Over the current four-year settlement agreement we now expect FPL's capital investments to be slightly above our previous range of $32 billion to $34 billion. This quarter FPL placed into service 1640 MW of new cost effective solar, putting FPL's owned and operated solar portfolio at over 6400 MW, which is the largest utility owned solar portfolio in the country. FPL's annual ten-year site plan continues to indicate that solar and storage are the most cost effective answer for customers to add reliable grid capacity over the next decade. The 2024 plan includes similar levels of new solar generation capacity 21 gigawatts across our service territory over the next ten years compared to our 2023 plan. But our 2024 plan doubles the expected deployment of battery storage to over 4 gigawatts, some of which we expect to be needed earlier than forecasted in our 2023 plan. With this plan, we expect to increase FPL solar mix from approximately 6% of our total generation in 2023% to 38% in 2033 while continuing to provide customers with clean, affordable energy. FPL believes battery storage will play an increasingly valuable role for customers, serving as an attractive capacity complement to our growing solar generation. From providing system balancing needs in critical parts of FPL's service territory to supplying energy during any time of day or weather condition, battery storage acts as a key resource to the system that is both valuable and cost effective for customers. Key indicators show that Florida's economy remains healthy. Florida continues to be one of the fastest growing states in the nation and had four of the five fastest growing U.S. metro areas between 2022 and 2023. FPL had its strongest quarter of customer growth in over 15 years, with the average number of customers increasing by more than 100,000 from the comparable prior year period. Although FPL's first quarter retail sales decreased by approximately 1.3% year-over-year, we estimate that weather had a negative impact on usage per customer of approximately 5.4% on a year-over-year basis. After taking weather into account, first quarter retail sales increased roughly 4.1% on a weather normalized basis from the comparable prior year period, driven primarily by continued favorable underlying population growth and usage per customer. Now let's turn to Energy Resources, which reported adjusted earnings growth of approximately 13.1% year-over-year. Contributions from new investments increased $0.15 per share year-over-year, primarily reflecting continued growth in our renewables portfolio. Our existing clean energy portfolio declined $0.02 per share, primarily due to unfavorable wind resource during the quarter. The comparative contribution from our customer supply business increased results by $0.04 per share. All other impacts reduced earnings by $0.12 per share. This decline reflects higher interest costs of $0.07 per share, half of which related to new borrowing costs to support new investments. Energy Resources had a strong quarter of new renewables and storage origination, adding approximately 2765 to the backlog. With these additions, our backlog now totals roughly 21.5 gigawatts after taking into account 1165 MW of new projects placed into service since our last earnings call, highlighting Energy Resources ability to continue to identify attractive and accretive investment opportunities which provide strong growth visibility in the years ahead. We recently plugged 740 MW of new solar and storage projects into service which are being used to support data centers located in Arizona and New Mexico. Both of these projects are now one of the largest battery storage facilities in their respective states and in combination with their co-located solar each project enabled the local utility to serve their customers need for new, reliable, clean energy to grow their own business operations. We are proud to continue to support our power and commercial and industrial customers to meet their growing power and capacity needs create jobs and provide economic development in these local communities. Our origination activities across our power and commercial and industrial customers are beginning to reflect the rising power demand. We are seeing it manifest with our power customers in their state RFP processes and bilateral discussions where we deliver cost effective renewables and storage to their grid. We are also observing it through interactions with our oil and gas and manufacturing customers where we utilize our data and technology to help them make better siting decisions. Our technology customers have been a consistent driver of demand for many years, reflected by our roughly 3 gigawatt operating portfolio and over 3 gigawatt project backlog as we partner with them to provide various clean energy solutions based on their key business variables. We are a partner with both our power and commercial industrial customers trust. We leverage our 3 gigawatt development pipeline, our 35 gigawatt operating renewables and storage portfolio, and our transformer and switchgear procurement covering energy resources billed through 2027 to deliver projects for customers. As John said, the power demand growth is expected to be strong through at least the end of the decade. We expect 2024 to be another strong year for new renewables and storage origination. This is on the heels of two consecutive record origination years at Energy Resources. We continue to expect to remain on track for our overall renewables development expectations of roughly 33 to 42 gigawatts from 2023 through 2026. Beyond renewables and storage, NextEra Energy Transmissions was recently selected by the California ISO to develop a new a two-mile, 500 kV transmission line in Southern California, with a capital investment of more than $250 million. We believe this project could unlock over 3 gigawatts of new renewable generation capacity, supporting California's ambitious clean energy goals. This award follows a record year for NextEra Energy Transmission in 2023 and we remain excited about the opportunities ahead for this growing business. We continue to believe our ability to build, own and operate transmission is a key advantage for our renewables business. Turning now to our first quarter 2024 consolidated results, adjusted earnings from corporate and other decreased by $0.01 per share year-over-year. This quarter, we entered into an agreement to transfer approximately $1 billion of tax credits throughout 2024, representing the bulk of our expected transfers for the year. Our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in 2024, 2025 and 2026. From 2021 to 2026, we continue to expect that our average annual growth in operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. And as we announced in February, the Board of Directors of NextEra Energy approved a targeted growth rate in dividends per share of roughly 10% per year through at least 2026 off a 2024 base. As always, our expectations assume our caveat. Turning to NextEra Energy Partners, we continue to focus on executing against the partnerships transition plan and delivering an LP distribution growth target of 6% through at least 2026. We bought out the STX Midstream convertible equity portfolio financing in 2023 and have sufficient proceeds available from the Texas pipeline portfolio sale to complete the NEP Renewables II buyout due in June 2024 and 2025. The third convertible equity portfolio financing associated with the Meade natural gas pipeline assets is expected to be addressed in 2025. With the plan for the near-term convertible equity portfolio financings well understood, we remain focused on the partnership's cost of capital improving, which is critical for its success. With that objective in mind, we continue to evaluate alternatives to address the remaining convertible equity portfolio financing with equity buyout obligations in 2027 and beyond. Turning to the partnership's targeted 6% growth in LP distributions per unit, NextEra Energy Partners does not expect to need an acquisition this year to achieve its 6% targeted growth rate and the partnership does not expect to require growth equity until 2027. In terms of NextEra Energy Partners growth plan, as a reminder, it involves organic growth, specifically re-powering of approximately 1.3 gigawatts of wind projects through 2026, as well as acquiring assets at attractive yields. Today we are announcing plans to repower an additional approximately 100 MW of wind facilities through 2026. The partnership has now announced roughly 1085 MW of repowers. Yesterday, NextEra Energy Partners Board declared a quarterly distribution of 89.25 cents per common unit or $3.57 per common unit on an annualized basis, which reflects an annualized increase of 6% from its fourth quarter 2023 distribution per common unit. Let me now turn to the detailed results. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $462 million and cash available for distribution was $164 million. New projects, which primarily reflect contributions from approximately 840 net megawatts of new projects that either closed in the second quarter of 2023 or achieved commercial operations in 2023, contributed approximately $32 million of adjusted EBITDA and $7 million of cash available for distribution. First quarter adjusted EBITDA contribution from existing projects declined by approximately $37 million year-over-year, driven primarily by unfavorable wind resource during the quarter and lower generation at Genesis Solar Project as a result of a planned outage for major maintenance. Wind resource was approximately 97% of long-term average versus 102% in the first quarter of 2023. The incentive distribution right fee suspension provided approximately $39 million of benefit this quarter for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution. Finally, adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution declined by approximately $44 million and $38 million respectively, for the divestiture of the Texas pipeline portfolio. From a base of our fourth quarter 2023 distribution per common unit and an annualized rate of $3.52, we continue to see 5% to 8% growth per year in LP distributions per unit, with a current target of 6% growth per year as being a reasonable range of expectations through at least 2026. We continue to expect the partnerships payout ratio to be in the mid-90s through 2026. We expect the annualized rate of the fourth quarter 2024 distribution that is payable in February 2025 to be $3.73 per common unit. NextEra Energy Partners expects run rate contributions for adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution from its forecasted portfolio at December 31, 2024 to be in the ranges of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion and $730 million to $820 million respectively. As a reminder, yearend 2024 run rate projections reflect calendar year 2025 contributions from the forecasted portfolio at year end 2024. As a reminder, our expectations are subject to our caveat. That concludes our prepared remarks and with that we will open the line for questions.


Brian Bolster : Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. For the third quarter of 2024, FPL increased earnings per share by $0.05 year-over-year. The principal driver of this performance was FPL's regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 9.5% year-over-year. We continue to expect FPL to realize roughly 10% average annual growth in regulatory capital employed over our current rate agreements four year term, which runs through 2025. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2 billion for the quarter, and we expect FPL's full year 2024 capital investment to be between $8 billion and $8.8 billion. Over the current four year settlement agreement, we expect FPL's capital investments to exceed $34 billion. FPL's third quarter retail sales increased 1% from the prior year comparable period. FPL grew retail sales by roughly 1.6% on a weather normalized basis, offset by milder weather. During the quarter, FPL reversed approximately $231 million of reserve amortization and FPL ended the quarter with a balance of roughly $817 million. With regard to costs associated with storm recovery, as a reminder, we have both the storm reserve and a surcharge mechanism to the extent the reserve has been fully utilized. Following Hurricane Debby, we had depleted our storm reserve and have deferred the remaining incremental cost for Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton to the balance sheet. We intend to recover those deferred costs and replenish the storm reserve via storm surcharge on customers' bills over the calendar year 2025. Although FPL has not completed the final accounting, our preliminary estimate of restoration costs that we plan to recover from customers through a surcharge is approximately $1.2 billion inclusive of $150 million, which will be utilized to replenish the storm reserve. Of course, the restoration cost will be subject to a final review and prudence determination by the Florida Public Service Commission. For the 12 months ending September 2024, FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8%. We still expect the regulatory ROE for the 12 months ending December 2024 and 2025 to be 11.4%. Now let's turn to Energy Resources, which reported adjusted earnings growth of approximately 11% year-over-year. At Energy Resources, adjusted earnings per share increased by $0.04 year-over-year. Contributions from new investments increased $0.15 per share year-over-year, primarily driven by continued growth in our renewables portfolio. Comparative contribution from our customer supply and trading business, which you'll recall had strong earnings last year, decreased by $0.10 per share driven by normalization of origination activity and margins, which is consistent with our expectations. Contributions from both NextEra Energy transmission and gas infrastructure businesses increased by $0.01 per share year-over-year. All other impacts reduced earnings by $0.03 per share. Energy Resources had another strong quarter of new renewables and storage origination, adding approximately 3 gigawatts to the backlog. With these additions, our backlog now totals over 24 gigawatts after taking into account roughly 1 gigawatt of new projects placed into service since our last earnings call, providing great visibility into Energy Resources' ability to deliver on our development program expectations. We expect the backlog additions will go into service over the next several years. Turning now to our third quarter 2024 consolidated results, adjusted EPS was $1.03 per share. Adjusted earnings from corporate and other were flat to last year's comparable quarter. At NextEra Energy, our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027. In 2023 to 2027, we continue to expect that our average annual growth in operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. And we also continue to expect to grow our dividends per share at roughly 10% per year through at least 2026 off a base -- off a 2024 base. As a reminder, our expectations are subject to our caveats. Turning to NextEra Energy Partners. Yesterday, NextEra Energy Partners board declared a quarterly distribution of $0.9175 per common unit or $3.67 per common unit on an annualized basis, up nearly 6% from a year earlier. Today, NextEra Energy Partners is pleased to announce the expected wind repowering of another approximately 225 megawatts of wind facilities, bringing its total backlog of wind repowering to approximately 1.6 gigawatts through 2026. The partnership's organic growth opportunities have expanded and we are increasing our wind repowering target to approximately 1.9 gigawatts of wind projects owned by NextEra Energy Partners through 2026, which is up from the previous target of 1.3 gigawatts. NextEra Energy Partners owns a large portfolio of high quality long-term contracted clean energy assets and has attractive organic growth from the repowering of its existing portfolio. NextEra Energy Partners remains focused on executing additional wind repowering opportunities in the future, which we believe would provide improved operating performance and higher generation. Let me now turn to the detailed results. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $453 million and cash available for distribution was $155 million. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution declined by approximately $35 million and $92 million respectively from the same period last year. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution reflect the year-over-year impact of the divestiture of the Texas Pipeline portfolio. In addition, third quarter cash available for distribution in 2024 was negatively impacted by the first interest payment on the partnership's December 2023 HoldCo debt issuance, as well as $23 million of higher project level debt service relating in large part to the 2023 acquisition financing. NextEra Energy Partners continue to expect the run rate contribution for adjusted EBITDA from its forecasted portfolio at December 31, 2024 to be in the range of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion. The year end 2024 run rate projections reflect expected calendar year 2025 contributions from the forecasted portfolio at year end 2024. The partnership also continues to evaluate alternatives to address its remaining convertible equity portfolio financing obligations and its cost of capital, focusing on its capital structure and the potential for redeployment of more cash flow toward driving organic cash flow growth. Given the demand for power, NextEra Energy Partners has many ways in which it can seek to grow, which could include not only acquiring assets, but also wind repowerings and potential other organic growth opportunities. NextEra Energy Partners plans to complete its review by no later than the fourth quarter 2024 call and intends to provide its distribution and run rate cash available for distribution expectations at that time. As a reminder, our expectations are subject to our caveats. That concludes our prepared remarks. And with that, we will open the line for questions.

FPL reserve amortization $231 million the quarter

FPL reversed reserve amortization During the quarter


Kirk Crews : Thanks John. Let's begin with FPL's detailed results. For the full year 2023 FPL's adjusted earnings per share increased $0.22 versus 2022. FPL's adjusted earnings results exclude the approximately $300 million after tax gain on the sale of Florida City Gas which closed on November 30th 2023. The principal driver of the 2023 full year performance was FPL's regulatory capital employed growth of approximately 12.5%. We continue to expect FPL's average annual growth and regulatory capital employed to be roughly 9% over the four year term of our current rate agreement, which runs through 2025. For the full year 2023, FPL's reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.8%. During the full year 2023, we used approximately $227 million of reserve amortization, leaving FPL with a yearend 2023 balance of roughly $1.2 billion. FPL's capital expenditures were approximately $2 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing its full year capital investments to a total of roughly $9.4 billion. These capital investments supported the successful commissioning of roughly 1, 200 megawatts of solar in 2023, continued hardening of the grid, and our efforts to underground our distribution system. During the fourth quarter of 2023, our 25 megawatt hydrogen pilot at the Okeechobee Clean Energy Center successfully achieved commercial operations. As a reminder, we plan to utilize this facility together with adjacent solar projects to create green hydrogen and blend it with natural gas at our Okeechobee plant. Key indicators show that the Florida economy remains strong and Florida's population continues to be one of the fastest growing in the country. Florida's economy continues to trend upward, and its GDP is now roughly $1.6 trillion, an increase of 9.3% over last year. For the fourth quarter of 2023, FPL's retail sales increased 1.6% from the prior year on a weather normalized basis, driven primarily by continued strong customer growth, which increased by nearly 81, 000 from the prior year comparable quarter. For the full year 2023, FPL retail sales increased 0.6% from the prior year on a weather normalized basis, also driven primarily by the strong customer growth in our service territory. Now, let's turn to Energy Resources, which reported full year adjusted earnings growth of approximately 12.9% year-over-year. Contributions from new investments increased by $0.35 per share due to strong growth in our renewables and storage portfolio. Contributions from our existing clean energy assets decreased results by $0.11 per share, driven primarily by the impact of weaker wind resource. 2023 was the lowest wind resource on record over the past 30 years. Our customer supply and trading business increased results by $0.16 per share, primarily due to higher margins in our customer facing businesses. Other decreased results by $0.26 per share year-over-year. This decline reflects higher interest costs of $0.22 per share, of which $0.10 was driven by new borrowing costs to support new investments. Energy Resources delivered our best year ever for origination, adding approximately 9, 000 megawatts of new renewables and battery storage projects to our backlog, which includes approximately 2, 060 megawatts since our last call. Our 2023 origination performance reflects continued strong demand from power customers looking for the least cost alternative to serve load and to replace uneconomic generation and commercial and industrial customers looking to help decarbonize their operation or meet their data center and AI demand. Our renewables backlog now stands at more than 20 gigawatts after taking into account roughly 2, 470 megawatts of new projects placed into service since our third quarter call. We believe our 20 gigawatt backlog provides clear visibility and Energy Resources’ ability to deliver for shareholders through 2026 and beyond. Turning now to the consolidated results for NextEra Energy. For the full year adjusted earnings from our corporate and other segment decreased by $0.08 per share year-over-year, primarily driven by higher interest costs. We successfully supported the growth in our underlying businesses from our strong operating cash flows, including the sale of tax credits as well as our historical funding sources. In 2023, we grew cash flow from operations well in excess of our adjusted earnings. We transferred approximately $400 million of tax credits, establishing relationships with numerous counterparties. We believe this will prove to be a competitive advantage as buyers look first to NextEra Energy given its size, experience, and the overall quality of its tax credit program. Overall, our funding plans for 2024 through 2026 remain consistent with the information we shared on the third quarter earnings call. We continue to believe NextEra Energy is well positioned to manage the interest rate environment. While the recent decline in interest rates is encouraging, we remain committed to managing the business to deliver value for customers and shareholders. Overall, we believe we are well positioned with $18.5 billion of interest rate swaps and we will continue to closely monitor the interest rate environment as the clients and rates certainly represent a tail end for our sector and customers. Our long-term financial expectations remain unchanged. We will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in 2024, 2025, and 2026. For the last 14 consecutive years, NextEra Energy has met or exceeded its financial expectation, which is a record we are proud of. From 2021 to 2026, we continue to expect that our average annual growth and operating cash flow will be at or above our adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate range. And we also continue to expect to grow our dividends per share at roughly 10% per year through at least 2024 off a 2022 base. As always, our expectations assume our caveats. Now let's turn to NextEra Energy Partners. In terms of the transition plans, NextEra Energy Partners closed the sale of Texas pipeline portfolio in late December, providing net proceeds of approximately $1.4 billion. NextEra Energy Partners expect to complete the NEP Renewables II buyouts of roughly $190 million and $950 million on their stated minimum buyout dates of June 2024 and 2025, respectively, as the partnerships continue to benefit from the low cash coupon through 2025. In terms of NextEra Energy Partners ' growth plan, as a reminder, it involves organic growth, specifically repowerings of approximately 1.3 gigawatt of wind projects through 2026, as well as acquiring assets at attractive yields. Today, we are announcing plans to repower an additional approximately 245 MW of wind facilities through 2026. The partnership has now announced roughly 985 MW of repowers with strong cash available for distribution yields. While the partnership does not expect to need an acquisition in 2024, the LP distribution growth target of 6% is supported, in part with roughly 175 MW of wind repowers, which are expected to generate attractive cash available for distribution yields. Finally, we were pleased with the high yield note issuance of $750 million, which was completed during the fourth quarter of 2023. This opportunistic refinancing allowed the partnership to pay off its corporate revolver in mid-December. Let me now turn to the financial results for NextEra Energy Partners. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $454 million, and cash available for distribution was $86 million. Adjusted EBITDA growth versus the prior year comparable quarter was primarily due to new asset additions and the incentive distribution's right fee suspension, while cash available for distribution was also impacted by incremental debt service. For the full year 2023, adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.9 billion, up 13.6% year-over-year, and was primarily driven by the contribution for new projects acquired in late 2022 and during 2023 and the Incentive Distribution Right Fee Suspension. New investments added approximately $228 million and the Incentive Distribution Right Fee Suspension added approximately $113 million of adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. This growth was partially offset by a decline from existing projects driven primarily by weaker wind resource. Cash available for distribution was $689 million for the full year and primarily driven by contributions from new projects of approximately $42 million and the Incentive Distribution Right Fee Suspension of $113 million while being partially offset by the weaker wind resource. Yesterday, the NextEra Energy Partners Board declared a quarterly distribution of $0.88 per common unit or $3.52 per unit on an annualized basis, which reflects an annualized increase of 6% from its third quarter 2023 distribution per unit. The partnership grew its LP distributions per unit by more than 8% year-over-year. From an updated base of our fourth quarter 2023 distribution per common unit and an annualized rate of $3.52, we continue to see 5% to 8% growth per year in LP distributions per unit with a current target of 6% growth per year as being a reasonable range of expectations through at least 2026. We continue to expect the partnership payout ratio to be in the mid-90s through 2026. We expect the annualized rate of the fourth quarter 2024 distribution that is payable in February 2025 to be $3.73 per common unit. NextEra Energy Partners is introducing December 31, 2024 run rate expectations for adjusted EBITDA in a range of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion and cash available for distribution in a range of $730 million to $820 million reflecting calendar year 2025 expectations for the forecasted portfolio at year end 2024. As a reminder, our expectations are subject to our caveat. That concludes our prepared remarks and with that, we will open the line for questions.


FPL capital expenditures $2 billion the quarter

FPL capital expenditures for the quarter