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Exelon Corp (EXC -0.90%)
Q2Â 2019 Earnings Call
Aug 1, 2019, 10:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to 2019 Second Quarter Exelon Earnings Call. My name is Laura, and I'll be facilitating the audio portion of today's interactive broadcast. [Operator Instructions])
At this time, I'd like to turn the show over to Dan Eggers, Exelon's Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead, sir.
Daniel L. Eggers -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Laura, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Chris Crane, Exelon's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Joe Nigro, Exelon's Chief Financial Officer. They're joined by other members of Exelon's senior management team, who will be available to answer our questions following our prepared remarks. We issued our earnings release this morning, along with the presentation, both of which can be found in the Investor Relations section of Exelon's website. The earnings release and other matters, which we discuss during today's call, contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties.
Actual results could differ from our forward-looking statements based on factors and assumptions discussed in today's material and comments made during the call. Please refer to today's 8-K and Exelon's other SEC filings for discussions of Risk Factors and factors that may cause results to differ from management's projections, forecast and expectations. Today's presentation also includes references to adjusted operating earnings and other non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the information contained in the appendix of our presentation and our earnings release for reconciliations between the non-GAAP measures and the nearest equivalent GAAP measures. We've scheduled 45 minutes for today's call.
I'll now turn the call over to Chris Crane, Exelon's CEO.
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before I turn to the financial results for the quarter, I'm going to spend a few minutes providing some key updates on a number of positive developments in our businesses over the last 3 months. First, we continue to move forward on our utility regulatory strategy filing distribution rate cases at BGE, ComEd and Pepco D.C., reflecting our safety and reliability investments across those service territories. In D.C., we filed our first multi-year rate case. The plan provides a necessary framework to align Pepco's system investments with D.C. policy goals, including grid modernization and further improvements to customer service and reliability. Joe will discuss the details in his remarks.
Second, last week, Pepco and other parties filed a settlement agreement at FERC for pep -- PECO, not Pepco, PECO's formula rate transmission rate. The settlement includes a 10.35% ROE, inclusive of a 50 basis points ROE adder. PECO made the original filing in 2017, and we expect the final order from FERC in 2020. Third, in June, we issued our annual corporate sustainability report locking our performance and sustainability goals and priorities in addition, the Benchmarking Air Emissions report that found Exelon is the largest generator of zero emissions energy in the U.S., producing 12% of the nations clean energy. Also, that we have the lowest emissions rate, emitting at a rate that is 4x less than the next cleanest generator. Fourth, the New Jersey PU -- BPU approved ZEC payments for the state nuclear units, including our interest in sale.
We appreciate the state support for the carbon-free power produced by these units. Fifth, we were unable to get legislation done in Pennsylvania in time to reverse the decision to close TMI this fall. Since then, there have been continued discussions on a path forward for the remaining nuclear plants in the state, including consideration of placing a priceline carbon through the regional carbon trading. Sixth, we are also pleased the Trumph administration decided not to impose coders on uranium, which would have jeopardized the continued operation of commercial nuclear reactors in The United States. And finally, last week, FERC issued an order directing PJM not to run the capacity auction in August. We agree with FERC's decision to delay the auction until the rules are finalized. The delay provides PJM and the state policymakers time to adjust to the commission's changes. Before I turn to the financial results, I also want to address 2 matters, we have raised with us recently.
Firstly, we received a number of questions from investors about the impact on our business from the steep decline in power prices. The decline presents a considerable challenge for us, but as you know, our hedging disclosures are a point-in-time estimate. If you have seen them move up and down in the past, we need to be thoughtful and deliver about our response if these prices persist. And we have a variety of levers that we can pull and decisions we can make if this is the future of energy markets. We are pursuing a number of market reforms addressing the financial challenges, many of them are planned space. Against this backdrop, I can also, again, assure you that we will not operate unprofitable or negative free cash flow plants. You've seen us close money losing plants in the past and you should expect that discipline to continue if reforms are not inactive.
The bottom line is that fundamental market performs leaded the United States, if we want to lead the nations, their clean energy climate goals, maintain fuel security and reliable system, we need to sustain an increased electrification preserving a significant economic value through good paying jobs and property taxes. We'll continue to work at state level and the national level with FERC, the Congress and the administration to make this happen. Second, we have had -- or we've received numerous questions from our investors about our subpoena in Illinois from the U.S. Attorney's Office. We are cooperating fully and provided all -- are providing all information requested by the U.S. Attorney's Office. We simply can't comment further on the investigation, and we are not going to speculate on whether it may affect legislative effects in the Illinois this fall.
What we do know about this fall session is there are a number of stakeholders who want to see clean energy legislation inactive. Illinois lacks behind other progressive states on clean energy policy. Passing the clean energy legislation is a priority for many stakeholders include -- in Illinois, including the Citizens Utility Board, labor the Clean Jobs Coalition and the Renewable Community. These stakeholders want to greatly expand their renewable penetration, so the state will be able to achieve the 100% clean energy target by 2030. Kathleen and her team are working with the stakeholders to help crack the legislation -- the legislative package and the inform members of general assembly on the benefits of this legislation. It's important to remember that while we are putting a real effort into preserving the value of the Generation clean, our focus remains on the utilities.
The bulk of our capital investment in growing majority of our earnings are coming from the regulated business where we continue to see great opportunities to invest and grow to the benefit of our customers and communities. Now I'll turn to the financial results on Slide 5. We had a good quarter delivering earnings at midpoint range of our guidance. On GAAP basis, we earned $0.50 per share versus $0.56 last year. On a non-GAAP basis, we earned $0.60 per share versus $0.71 last year. Joe will cover these drivers in his remarks. Turning to Slide 6. Operational performance of the utility was mixed during the quarter. We continued to perform at top quartile levels across reliability and customer operations metrics, whereas safety performance has slipped. Safety is the highest priority and we are focused on ways to improve our safety culture and performance. Outage frequency and outage duration performance is in the top quartile for 3 of our 4 utilities, with ComEd performing in the top decile.
On the customer operations aside, all of our utilities perform in top quartile for service level and call abandonment rate. Our relationship with our customers is improving due to the investments we are making to improve reliability and the customer experience. This can be seen in our customer satisfaction scores and in the recent J.D. Power electrical residential customer satisfaction ratings. BGE and PECO and ComEd achieved top decile performance in customer satisfaction index. We improved or maintained our rankings in the J.D. Power rankings, Delmarva ranked first in the East mid region -- or midsize region, the first Exelon utility to ever be ranked first. BGE and PECO maintained their first quartile performance in the East large segment and ComEd improved in its rankings to the second quartile. Generation performed well during the quarter and nuclear produced 38.8 terawatts hours of zero-emission electricity with a capacity factor of 95.1%. And Exelon power had a gas and hydro dispatch match of 99.7%, exceeding our plan in the wind and solar capture on -- the plan was plan 96%. or was -- the plan was 96%.
Now I'll turn it over to Joe.
Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will cover our second quarter results, our quarterly financial updates, including trailing 12-month ROEs at utility and our hedge disclosures. Turning to Slide 7. We earned $0.50 per share on a GAAP basis and $0.60 per share on a non-GAAP basis, which is at the midpoint of our guidance range of $0.55 to $0.65 per share. Exelon Utilities delivered a combined $0.39 per share net of holding company expenses. Utility earnings were modestly higher than our plan, largely due to O&M timing of ComEd, BGE and PECO, which will reverse itself over the course of the year. This was partially offset by milder weather expected in the Philadelphia area, impacting PECO by about $0.01 per share. ExGen earned $0.21 per share behind our plan. This was a result of lower loaded volumes at constellation due to mild weather and the standard outage sale.
These factors where, partially offset by favorable O&M, strong performance of our generation fleet and realized gains in our nuclear decommissioning trust fund. We are reaffirming our full year guidance of $3 to $3.30 per share. And for the third quarter, we are providing adjusted operating guidance -- earnings guidance of $0.80 to $0.90 per share. On Slide 8, we share our quarter-over-quarter walk. The $0.60 per share in the second quarter of this year with $0.11 per share lower than the second quarter of 2018. Exelon Utilities less holdco earnings were up $0.14 per share compared with last year. The earnings growth is driven primarily by higher distribution rates associated with completed rate cases and higher transmission revenues at ComEd and PHI relative to the second quarter of 2018. This was partially offset by unfavorable weather at PECO. Exchange earnings were down $0.13 per share compared with last year.
The decrease was driven by lower realized energy prices, partially offset by higher ZEC revenue from the increasing New York ZEC prices and the start of the New Jersey ZEC program. Moving to Slide 9, our utility ROEs remained strong and we continue to exceed our 9% to 10% earned ROE targets across the utilities. The consolidated PHI utility earned a 9.1% ROE for the trailing 12 months. Compared to last quarter, we had some help from the constructive distribution rate case settlement at ACE, Pepco D.C. and Pepco Maryland, offset by equity infusions across PHI. Legacy Exelon Utilities maintained its strong 10.5% earned ROEs in the quarter. Importantly, consolidated ROEs across our utilities were 10.2%. We remain focused on meeting our utility earnings growth targets by maintaining the earned ROEs at PHI and sustaining strong performance at our utilities.
Turning to Slide 10. On May 24, BGE filed for a combined $148 million rate increase in electric and gas distribution revenues. The requested rate increase includes $81 million and almost $68 million for electric and gas revenues, respectively, based on rate base of $5.4 billion and a requested ROE of 10.3%. The increase is primarily driven by the ongoing need for capital investments to maintain and modernize the electric and gas distribution system. It also reflects moving $15.8 million of revenues currently being recovered via the stride and electric reliability investment surcharges into rate base, we -- into base rates. We expect to receive an order in the fourth quarter. On May 30, Pepco filed a multi-year appointment in the District of Columbia. Requesting a revenue increase over 3 years to recover capital investments made during the 2018, '19 period and planned investments over the 2020 to '22 time period.
The request provides the necessary framework to allow Pepco to align it's system investments with policy goals set by the commission and enable us to continue to make the investments needed to modernize the energy grid, support the District's energy goals, sustain first current quartile reliability performance and enhance programs and tools that have resulted in improved satisfaction among our customers. The multi-year plan includes 5 performance incentive mechanisms or PIMs, focused on system reliability, customer service and interconnection of distribute -- distributed energy resources. The inclusion of the PIMs with the mulit-year plan provide a performance-based ratemaking approach designed to strengthen general incentives for grid utility performance and penalize for underperformance.
The multi-year plan provides customers with rate predictability and reduces the administrative costs to customers caused by free for filing traditional rate cases to recover costs. On July 9, the chief public utility law judge issued in his proposed order in the Pepco Maryland distribution rate case. The Chief Judge recommended a $10.3 million revenue increase and a 9.6% allowed ROE, which is 10 basis points higher than Pepco Maryland's current ROE. A final order by the Maryland PUC is expected by August 13. Finally, ComEd annual formula rate update filing is expected to be decided in December of this year. More details on these rate cases can be found on Slides 20 through 23 in the appendix. Turning to Slide 11. We're continuing our robust capital deployment program at utilities and during the second quarter, we invested $1.4 billion of capital to the benefit of our customers.
We expect to exceed our capital plan of $5.3 billion by $100 million this year. We have been able to take advantage of the favorable weather to fund investments in our gas business at BGE plus we had some additional storm related work. As Chris mentioned, these investments are improving our infrastructure, increasing reliability and resiliency, which results in a better customer experience. Today, I've been talking about 2 projects that are part of these efforts and will bring improved operations to our customers in D.C. and Northern Illinois. The first project is the District of Columbia lying underground project or DC PLUG. The DC PLUG initiative is a $500 million multi-year partnership between the Districts Department of Transportation and Pepco focused on the underground placement of more vulnerable distribution power lines.
Over the course of the initiative, up to 30 feeders will be placed underground with 6 during the first base. The underground placement of these lines will make the electric distribution system more resilient during the severe weather events reducing the duration and frequency of electric outages. The second project featured is the expansion of ComEd Itasca Substation. This $48 million project installed a new distribution terminal and associated equipment, including an indoor switchgear building. 3-medium power transformers and 12 138 circuit breakers. The expanded substation provides capacity to power the equivalent of 45,000 Ohms. It will support 3 new data centers in the Itasca growth technology corridor near O'Hare airport. These customers choose the Greater Chicago area after several years of discussions with ComEd's economic development team part of our continuing efforts to bring additional investment and jobs in Northern Illinois.
On slide 12, we provide our gross margin update and current hedging strategy at the Generation company. Before discussing the gross margin update, I'd want to spend a minute talking about the drop in the illiquid forward power curves during the second quarter, particularly in June. Prices in PJM in 2020 and 2021 declined sharply. Now we have around-the-clock power prices fell nearly $3 per megawatt hour or approximately $0.11 -- 11% in 2020 and approximately $2.40 per megawatt hour or close to 10% in 2021. PJM West Hub prices fell more than $4 per megawatt hour and approximately 13% to 14% in '20 and '21, respectively. Jim can cover in more detail during Q&A, but at a high level we think these declines reflected some combination of the following: lower natural gas prices a mild start to summer that weighed on prompt prices, which then cascaded out to the forward curve, which we have seen before.
Some market anticipation of plants targeted for retirement looking less likely to retire and hedging activity likely including market participants, selling based on changes in the economic value of revenue put options sold or written to support newbuild power plants over the last few years dragging down process. Despite the mild weather and low price environment, 2019 total gross margin is flat to our last update. During the quarter, we've executed $100 million in power new business and $50 million in nonpower new business. We are highly hedged for the rest of the year and well-balanced on our Generation to load matching strategy. In 2020 and '21, our total gross margin is down $100 million and $250 million, respectively. Both in gross margin declined $550 million and $500 million, respectively, primarily due to lower energy crisis at PJM West Hub, New York Zone A and PJM NiHub. Mark-to-market of hedges were up $500 million and $300 million, respectively, as our hedge position mitigated part of the impact of the price declines.
We also executed $50 million of power new business in both 2020 and 2021. We continue to remain behind our ratable hedging from -- for the sectors and added less than a ratable amount of hedges across our regions during the quarter. We ended the quarter at 10% to 13% behind ratables in 2020 and 7% to 10% behind in '21 when considering cross commodity hedges. Our Generation to load matching strategy remains a competitive advantage contributing positive margin and providing a vehicle to bring our Generation output to market in a disciplined manner. We remain comfortable with the strategy to hold open market length, given the continued strength of our balance sheet.
Finally, moving on to Slide 13, we remain committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet in our investment grade affect ratings. Even at the June 30 pricing marks, given the levers we have available, we are confident that we will stay within our consolidated FFO to debt metrics in our disclosure window 2019 to 2022. Our consolidated corporate credit metrics remain above our targeted and meaningfully above S&P thresholds. Looking at ExGen, we are well ahead of our debt-to-EBITDA target of 3x. For 2019, we expect to be at 2.5x debt-to-EBITDA and 2x on a lead course basis.
With that, I will now turn the call back to Chris for his closing remarks.
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Joe. Turning to Slide 14. We recognized the current power markets are creating headwinds for us. We are prepared to meet them head on and take thorough or thoughtful action if necessary. In the meantime, we are encompassing that the things, we committed to do, including maintaining industry-leading operations, meeting our financial commitments, effectively deploying more than $5 billion and capital across our utilities this year and advocating for policies that support clean energy. Our strategy remains the right one, and we are committed to our value proposition. We continue to grow the utilities, targeting a 7.8% rate base growth and a 6% to 8% earnings growth through 2022.
We continue to use free cash flow from the Genco to fund an incremental equity needs of the utilities, to pay down date and fund part of the growing dividend. We will continue to optimize the value of ExGen business by seeking fair compensation for our zero-emitting generation fleet, closing uneconomic plants, like we are doing with the TMI and selling assets where it makes sense to accelerating our debt reduction plans and maximizing value through the Generation to load match strategy constellation. We will sustain strong investment grade -- credit metrics and will grow our dividend annually 5% through 2020. The strategy underpinned this value proposition is effective. We remained committed to optimizing the value of our businesses and earning your ongoing support of Exelon.
Operator, we can now open the call up to questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Greg Gordon of Evercore ISI.
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
So one high-level question and then maybe one or two in the leaps questions. And then I don't want to ask you anything that you're maybe comfortable dealing to deeply and to, but I'm going to anyway. You mentioned the concept of levers that you have pulled in order to stay on track to generate the free cash flow and credit metric targets that you laid out for us at the beginning of the year despite the fall on the forward curves. Can you talk about how you won't run power plants that aren't cash flow positive. And look, I have covered the stock for a long time, and covered it for long time, we've been in the situation before, and nothing is ever as good or as bad as it looks at the moment, but can you tell us should this persist, what some of those options are in a little bit more detail, please?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, I'll let Joe go through the list of what we've debt, laid out right now, we've talking quite a bit about it meeting on it as we watch the markets. So Joe?
Kathleen L. Barron -- Exelon Corporation -- SVP of Governmental and Regulatory
Yes. Greg you mentioned one of them, I think we've proven through our time without
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
As you can imagine, we have a significant communications drive with the legislator and administration on the situation and we are prepared to present them with a coalition, all that Kathleen described, who is she's working with that will balance out the needs for the state, the goals that the governor set after his election to get to 100% clean by 2013 and be able to do that in an economic way that does not harm our customers. Do you want to talk about the coalition?
Kathleen L. Barron -- Exelon Corporation -- SVP of Governmental and Regulatory
Yes. Greg, there are a number stakeholders that are beyond the focus on getting clean energy legislation inactive in Illinois. As you know, a number of states across the country have already set with 100% clean energy targets and it's not just states like California and New York, it's across the country, and so Illinois is a lot of effort, just I'm making sure that Illinois, which is already the cleanest state in the country, has an equally aggressive target. So on that question, we have folks in the environmental community heavily focusing on environmental justice, players, the renewable developers are very focused on addressing both flaws in the prior version of the states clean energy targets to make sure that they can achieve the goals that have been set previously, but also as I said, in more ambitious new target of renewable development in the state.
The Consumer Advocate is heavily focused on this policy as well because the question of state having to pay twice for capacity is very much in the forefront and ensuring that if we're going to incentivize clean energy, we can count that capacity toward our obligations at PJM. And then finally, the labor community, very focused on what these policies mean both for new construction and preservation of things in clean energy resources. So that's the coalition us focusing on putting the package together. There are a number of parties, who will come together in the end to help us communicate the message that Chris mentioned that, it is important for the state, but it's not going to be possible if we can't allow this research to allow its capacity in less worthy efforts is foundational in getting this policy done.
Greg Gordon -- Evercore ICI -- Analyst
And my final question was actually a numbers question. On the up-to-date -- on the update on the mark-to-market, Joe, there was $50 million decline in power new business to go. Is that because that moved into hedges because you executed sales? Or you assuming either lower volumes or lower margins in the out years in the retail business?
James McHugh -- Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
Greg. Yes, this is Jim McHugh. That is just executed -- that's executed business has now moved into the mark-to-market of hedges. So all when you that all together and the numbers, those 2 lines would be flat from last quarter. It's just executed now.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steve Fleishman of Wolfe Research.
Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research.
I've got follow-ups to both the Greg's questions. So first of all, just I know in the past some prices have fallen a lot. At certain times you just talked about actually how much money-losing plants there are and potential offsets. Can you give any flavor on that -- on just, hey, if prices stay this low, if we shut certain plants or generally shut plants, what the potential offset could be?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
If you're asking in market prices, we don't calculate the affect of uneconomic plants being shut down on the effect of the market. If you're asking about the affect of removing the negative free cash flow, we haven't got those numbers to be published right now. It's something that we are looking at. But we are trying to evaluate them unit by unit and then in aggregate. As we've said, publicly, right now you can see a challenge in the future, if this market persists between the capacity and the energy market, the Dresden, Bayern and Bray Wood are financially challenged.
Now do you think we have got a clear path that with good coalition to support, fixing that at -- some of that at the state level, and we still are working very hard with PJM for FERC to continue on base loads scarcity and the capacity market reforms that should correct and make a fair market. So -- but short of those things happening, those 3 sites you can look into the future and see the challenges that they have.
Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research.
Okay. And then I guess, the point there is, if we're just using current forwards and taking it down that we're including basically losses on plants that you would not just sit and take forever?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Right.
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Correct.
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
That's right. Either we have a clear path to securing them or the units will be shut down. We will not damage the balance sheet sitting around for years with negative free cash flow or negative earnings.
Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research.
Okay. And then just a specific question to the Illinois coalition. Can you just give any color if possible that since this news from a few weeks ago came out about the subpoena, has there been any -- have these talks continued? And is there any kind of public process we will be able to see kind of those stocks? Or is it just going to kind of be settling in legislator proposal?
William A. Von Hoene -- Senior Executive Vice Presiden and Chief Strategy Officer
Steve, it's Bill Von Hoene. The activity that has started and continued for a number of months on advancing the clean energy legislation among the coalition that was referenced by Kathleen and by Chris remains unchanged. We're meeting regularly, we're doing the stakeholder outreach, we're trying to craft a package and educate members of legislature and the tendency of the grand jury of subpoena has had no impact on the level of activity or the intensity of the activity in that regard.
Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research.
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Turnure of JP Morgan.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
I was wondering if you could just help us with some background of your franchise agreement in Chicago kind of when that expires, the terms of renewal, etc. and kind of how you're thinking about that right now?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Joe? Anne?
Anne R. Pramaggiore -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I'll start. This is Anne. And Joe may get this here as well. But basically the expiration date is the end December of 2020. The city needs to give us an indication by the end of the year as to whether they want to maintain status quo, renegotiate or terminate the franchise agreement. So we'll know by the end of the year. But we're in discussions with them. We started to have discussions around that. We understand what their priorities are and they are, I think, priorities are very much aligned with ours. They want to see more clean energy in the city of Chicago and they are concerned about vulnerable population, in particular, in terms of pricing, and those are all -- those are both strong strategic elements of our focus going forward at all our utilities. But that's the status right now.
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, and just a supplement what Anne said. We've been in the process of these negotiations for some time. We've exchanged terms and had detailed discussions about how the agreement would be structured going forward. We had a slowdown in those negotiations during the transition to the new mayor. But those negotiations have resumed, didn't fall at this point.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
Okay. And right now that is you're set of assets and you would need to be compensated if anything changed there?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. That's correct. But, again, the focus here is on getting the franchise agreement done. Our expectation is it will be fully negotiated and done. We'll address the issues that Anne talked about to the extent municipalization has looked at that will come with the very hefty price tag, as you know. And I don't think realistically that's the path we're going to go down.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
Okay. And then if I guess, just more modeling here for the balance of 2019. You put out the third quarter guidance there, which was I think a little bit less than what we had expected. How are you thinking about the fourth quarter right now and what I guess might look like a O&M headwind that released in the back half overall?
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, you heard me say in my -- it's Joe. You heard me say in my prepared remarks that we reaffirmed our guidance range of $3 to $3.30, that's inclusive of their earnings guidance we gave you obviously for the third quarter, and we're comfortable with those numbers.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
Okay. Anything to think about that might be kind of onetime or nonrecurring in nature for the third or fourth quarter that could help you year-over-year?
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
I mean you saw some of the drivers as -- in the second quarter when we talked about the lower load volumes that Constellation driven by the unfavorable weather and we continue to -- as Jim said, we talked about -- we continue to execute our new business at Constellation. So we continue to manage the Utility business accordingly and we're comparable with the full year guidance.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Weinstein from Credit Suisse.
Michael Weinstein -- Credit Sussie -- Analyst
Just one quick follow-up on guidance. The guidance for $4.2 billion of cash flow Generation from ExGen over the next 4 years, what does that assume in terms of uneconomic plants you might be operating or if you could tell -- I guess retirements going forward in those type of plants? What's built into that $4.2 billion number?
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Michael, it's Joe. As Chris mentioned in -- when he just said inclusive when you look at the 3 plants in Illinois that he mentioned Bayern, Bray Wood and Dresden, those plants are running in those cash flow forecast and into the extent of these power prices continue, there's obviously challenges financially with those. And as I said in my remarks, we won't continue to run those plants in perpetuity uneconomically. Having said that, we haven't provided the numbers specifically. But we will -- we put out a forecast on our fourth quarter call for $7.8 billion of free cash flow from 2019 to 2022 coming off Generation, but we're still working with that number.
Michael Weinstein -- Credit Sussie -- Analyst
So I mean, would it be accurate to say that there is upside ...
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
It's like one side of the story here obviously because we -- in the numbers we provide, we are showing you the mark-to-market. You see our gross margin disclosures and the change quarter-over-quarter driven -- this quarter driven by the price drops we saw in the second quarter. I also discussed there are other levers at our disposal those aren't reflected in our disclosures. But we can go back to what we filed on during the fourth quarter call, and that's what we've disclosed at this point.
Michael Weinstein -- Credit Sussie -- Analyst
Okay great.
Operator
Your last question comes from the line of Praful Mehta of Citigroup.
Rahul Mehta -- Citigroup
Thanks so much. Hi guys, so maybe just following up a little bit on the power markets. It was very helpful to get the levers that you've talked about, but just to understand from a PJM perspective, do you see more happening on the market side as in other players shutting down other plants or other form of rationalization like you've also talked about regulation. Where do you see PJM going because if it stays this way, clearly it's unsustainable. So wanted to understand how your thoughts on market would play out?
James McHugh -- Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, Praful, this is Jim McHugh. I'll start. I think from a market perspective, first of all the one thing we -- I want to highlight to Joe's point about this at this point in time, we're already seeing the NiHub market move up $1 on the forward curve since the end of the quarter and the West Hub markets moved about $0.75 since the June 30 pricing. So we've seen a pickup in prices so far. I think when it comes to what we are working on, we talked over last several quarters on the market reform side, that as our pricing is willing to be enacting -- enacted, there's some work being done on reserves in scarcity pricing, and the ORDC curve and PJM. And then in the long-run it's a little bit lower priority right now for PJM, but the focus on the baseload price formation and through a relaxation.
Those are some of the things. I think there are -- we have new builds and retirements both happening over the next 4 or 5 years as natural force of business and our fundamental analysis. So there will be a little bit of that, but I think buy and large, the reforms are around price formation and then in the longer run, if we're able to come up with a market solution to have carbon pricing in the market would be another thing in the longer that would be something we would all continue working on. The one thing that's interesting to me about where we seen these prices in that $22 area in the NiHub, if you look at Cal 21, Cal 22, Cal 23 that's trading downward to quarter 2 just clear. The Quarter 2 NiHub just cleared $22.25 with a very, very mild weather. So the entire curve is trading where a very mild quarter just traded. So it's an interesting note to me and I've given some insight into why we think those prices on the forward curve have that -- have already responded slightly higher in the last couple of weeks.
Praful Mehta -- Citigroup Inc -- Analyst
Now that's super helpful color. And maybe just one follow-up more strategic, if you do see these profiles does that mean that you think more retail would be helpful to the business? Do you look to expand on the retail side or maybe acquire more retail businesses? Is that something you think would work?
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. So I think from a retail perspective our customer-facing businesses are doing pretty well. The margins are hanging in, our win rates are strong and we're holding our market share our retail customer-facing business and our wholesale load option and wholesale origination businesses have -- had performed well. I think as far as acquisitions and expanding it, we have a -- we thought for a while now about having grown what is the best-in-class platform. So if we will look to acquire books of business if there's a value proposition there, that we can absorb it into our best-in-class platform and just take a retail book of business. We will look for those opportunities and we will certainly take a hard look at them.
Praful Mehta -- Citigroup Inc -- Analyst
Really helpful thank you guys.
Operator
I would like to turn the call over back to speaker, Chris Crane. Please go ahead, sir.
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you all for participating in the call today. We remain on track to meet our commitments to our customers, communities and shareholders. With that, we'll close up the call.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 45 minutes
Call participants:
Daniel L. Eggers -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Joseph Nigro -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Christopher Mark Crane -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
James McHugh -- Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
William A. Von Hoene -- Senior Executive Vice Presiden and Chief Strategy Officer
Anne R. Pramaggiore -- Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
Kathleen L. Barron -- Exelon Corporation -- SVP of Governmental and Regulatory
Greg Gordon -- Evercore ICI -- Analyst
Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research.
Chris Turnure -- JP Morgon -- Analyst
Michael Weinstein -- Credit Sussie -- Analyst
Rahul Mehta -- Citigroup
Praful Mehta -- Citigroup Inc -- Analyst
