Entergy Corporation (ETR) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Entergy Corporation (ETR -0.17%)
Q3 2021 Earnings Call
Nov 3, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Entergy Corporation Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Release and Teleconference. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Bill Abler, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Bill Abler -- Vice President Of Investor Relations

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We will begin today with comments from Entergy's Chairman and CEO, Leo Denault; and then Drew Marsh, our CFO, will review results. In an effort to accommodate everyone who has questions, we request that each person ask no more than two questions. In today's call, management will make certain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, which are set forth in our earnings release, our slide presentation and our SEC filings. Entergy does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Management will also discuss non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation, both of which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website.

And now I will turn the call over to Leo.

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting quarterly results that keep us firmly on track to meet our financial commitments. Third quarter adjusted earnings were $2.45 per share. With good visibility into the rest of the year, we are narrowing our 2021 guidance range and $5.90 through $6.10 per share and expect to achieve 2022 and 2023 results in line with our outlooks. Further, we are extending our outlooks to include 2024 and see our steady predictable growth of five percent to seven percent continuing through this period. Additionally, we achieved the milestone of raising our dividend by six percent and aligning with our earnings growth. This happened on the schedule we previously communicated and represents another commitment met. We have developed a more resilient business. And despite $65 million of nonfuel revenue losses in the third quarter due to Hurricane Ida, we are maintaining our financial commitments.

Our resiliency provides stability that is valuable to all of our stakeholders, particularly customers and owners. The quarter was heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a strong category for hurricane bringing powerful destructive wins across New Orleans, Baton Rouge and beyond. Our coastal communities were particularly hard hit by both strong winds and storm surge. Ida disrupted the lives and businesses of many of our customers and communities and Entergy was there to help when they needed us. We gathered a restoration force of 27,000, our largest ever, representing Entergy employees, contractors and mutual assistance crews from 41 states across the country. I would like to take a moment to personally thank our employees and the crews who answered the call to come help restore power to our impacted customers.

Further gratitude goes to our employees who worked restoration despite their own homes being damaged by Ida. They epitomize what it means to put our customers first. I never cease to be amazed by the dedication and effectiveness of the many restoration workers who step away from their lives for weeks at a time to help our customers and communities get their lives and livelihoods back up and running again. Despite Ida's wins creating significant damage and destruction across our power grid with close to one million peak outages, our team restored customers at a rapid pace. In just over a week, we had roughly half of all customers restored. Metro areas like New Orleans and Baton Rouge saw restoration essentially completed by day 10. Within three weeks, more than 98% of all affected customers were restored.

And it's easy to lose sight of the fact that this restoration was successfully accomplished while dealing with the effects of the pandemic. Entergy also helped our customers and communities throughout the recovery process by developing -- or deploying 165 commercial scale generators to power critical community infrastructure like medical facilities, gas stations, grocery stores, municipal water systems and community cooling centers in advance of power being restored. In addition to restoration work, Entergy's employees contributed countless hours to their communities and Entergy shareholders committed $1.25 million to help affected communities rebuild and recover. While power has been restored to customers who can safely take it, our job is not finished. We are committed to minimizing the effects of Ida on our customers' bills. We will work with our regulators to seek securitization of Ida storm costs, which is a proven and low-cost means of recovery.

Further, we are coordinating with key officials and stakeholders, including Louisiana Governor Edwards, The City Council of New Orleans, Louisiana Public Service Commission, Louisiana Congressional Delegation and the Biden administration to seek federal support that could offset the cost of our customers for Ida in the 2020 storms. There is widespread alignment among state and local leaders on the compelling case that Louisiana has to obtain federal support. We are fully aligned with this perspective. To be clear, any federal funding that Entergy utilities obtain will reduce the customer obligation dollar for dollar. We're also committed to mitigating the impacts of future storms. Entergy has made significant transmission and distribution investments, nearly $10 billion over the last five years, which made our system more resilient.

We've seen those new investments perform well under the most challenging conditions. Wind damage to our transmission structures, for example, has occurred most almost exclusively to older structures built to prior standards. It has become clear that major weather events of all types are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. Hurricane Laura made landfall as the strongest storm to hit the Louisiana Coast since 1856. Then exactly 12 months later, Hurricane Ida hit with almost equal force. Our resilient standards and asset programs have never been static, and we've continued to evolve them. And as I mentioned, our investments are working as designed. However, the uptick in severity and frequency of storms is compelling us to take a fresh look at how we can make our system more resilient, including the pace at which we can achieve it. Even prior to Ida, we are actively deploying multiple options along the resiliency scale, particularly for our service areas south of I-10 and I-12, which has the greatest exposure to hurricane-strength winds and flooding.

Evaluating these resiliency options needs to be done under future climate scenarios. And we are taking into account important considerations such as customer affordability and sufficiency of materials and skilled labor. This customer-driven investment will be significant, and we will work collaboratively with our regulators and other stakeholders to determine the optimal path forward. Coming back to the quarter, I would like to highlight that despite dealing with a major storm, the business continued to run well without missing a beat. We've made great progress in several open proceedings. First, Entergy Arkansas filed a unanimous settlement for its formula rate plan, and the Arkansas Commission has agreed to cancel the hearing and take up the settlement based on the filed testimony, which is positive.

New rates in Arkansas will be implemented in January. In New Orleans, we recently implemented rates at the level that reflected all adjustments proposed by the council's advisors so there are no further proceedings there. We also are pleased to note that Entergy Arkansas reached a settlement with key customers of its Green Promise tariff filing. If approved, this tariff will enable us to offer green solutions to meet the growing sustainability demands of our customers. And we're making progress on other open proceedings. In Entergy Louisiana, its FRP rates went into effect. Entergy Arkansas received approval for the West Memphis Solar project. Entergy Texas reached an unopposed settlement on its 2020 storm cost filing. And Entergy Texas also filed for approval of the Orange County Advanced Power Station. And the Louisiana 2020 storm recovery and securitization process remains on track.

We continue to make progress on decarbonizing our fleet. We've announced five gigawatts of solar in our supply plan through 2030 with a goal of doing more. And an update to our supply plan and renewables growth will be provided next week at EEI. In addition to healthy meeting -- in addition to helping meet decarbonization goals, the cost of renewable resources relative to conventional resources continues to trend favorably, and renewable resources provided an important edge against rising and volatile natural gas prices. We will provide more details around our latest resource plans at EEI. Last quarter, I discussed ways in which Entergy can help our industrial customers meet their sustainability goals. While many have expressed long-term goals like net-zero by 2050, even more have developed shorter-term interim goals that will require action by the end of the decade.

Clean electrification is one of several important tools that our industrial customers have as a means to achieve their objectives. Clean electrification provides a great opportunity for load growth and will require significant capital investment in renewable generation, transmission and distribution. The load growth that comes with electrification will help pay for incremental customer-centric investments. We'll have more to discuss regarding the opportunity we have to help our customers meet their sustainability objectives next week at EEI. While it is important to discuss these longer-term growth opportunities, I want to make sure we don't lose sight of the very solid based investment plan that we have in front of us. Over the next three years, we have a $12 billion capital plan that is designed to deliver reliability, resilience and improve customer experience and environmental and cost efficiency benefits to our customers.

When paired with our well-defined regulatory constructs, our plan will deliver five percent to seven percent adjusted EPS growth for our owners over the next three years. That's a very solid base plan. And beyond this strong foundation, these other opportunities in renewable generation, clean electrification and resilience acceleration will serve to extend our runway of growth throughout the rest of the decade. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you at the EEI Financial Conference.

Now Drew will review the quarterly results.

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Leo. Good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting solid results even with the challenges from Hurricane Ida. Summarized on Slide five, our adjusted earnings per share was $2.45, slightly higher than a year ago. We continue to execute our strategy, and we are firmly on track to meet our commitments. In fact, with three quarters of the year behind us, we are narrowing our guidance range to $5.90 to $6.10. We're also affirming our outlooks and extending the outlook period through 2024, and we recently raised our dividend to align with our adjusted EPS growth rate. Turning to Slide six. Our investments to improve customer outcomes continue to drive growth. That includes rate changes to recover those investments as well as associated new operating expenses. Industrial billed sales were 10% stronger than a year ago.

We saw increases across most segments with the largest increases in primary metals, petrochemicals, transportation, industrial gases and chlor-alkali. This reaffirms the strength of our industrial customer base. And in a world with supply chain constraints and higher energy prices, our industrial customers' businesses remain strong and competitive. These industrial sales were strong despite Hurricane Ida. Overall, across all classes, we estimate that third quarter revenues were approximately $65 million lower as a result of Ida. Hurricane Laura's impact on third quarter 2020 was approximately half of that. Other O&M was higher this quarter as planned. This is partly due to higher costs for distribution operations, including reliability costs, higher expenses in our power generation function and higher health and benefit costs. Moving to EWC on Slide Seven.

You'll see results were slightly lower than a year ago. The key driver was the shutdown and sale of Indian Point. Operating cash flow for the quarter is shown on Slide Eight. The quarter's result is about $300 million higher than last year. The increase is due largely to improved collections from customers, including collections associated with investments to benefit customers and Winter Storm Uri. This was partially offset by expenditures related to higher natural gas prices. Slide nine summarizes our credit and liquidity. We expect to maintain our current credit ratings, and we continue to expect to achieve targeted rating agency credit metrics as storm restoration spending is securitized and we retire storm-related debt. I'll take a minute to discuss our balance sheet, beginning with a quick update on Hurricane Ida on Slide 10. Over the past several weeks, we've refined our cost estimates, and we've shaved $100 million off the upper end of the range.

The total cost is now expected to be $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion. We've also updated our estimate of the nonfuel revenue loss to $75 million to $80 million, the lower half of our previous range. While our net liquidity, including storm reserves remained strong at $4 billion, we are also working to ensure timely storm cost recovery. That starts with a successful restoration effort and proceeds through two avenues. First, Entergy Louisiana amended its 2020 storm filing to request an additional $1 billion to provide early liquidity for Hurricane Ida costs. And in Texas, we reached a settlement on the 2020 storm cost filing and that is now before the PUCT. Second, we have improved the efficiency of our storm invoice processing to accelerate our filings and ultimately, cost recovery. We plan to complete financing for the 2020 storms by early next year and Ida by the end of next year.

And our work isn't over, we'll continue to identify ways to further reduce business risk. As Leo highlighted, we are looking forward to a conversation with our customers, retail regulators and other stakeholders about how we best accelerate and implement a strong resilience plan. We have already hardened more than half of our critical transmission and distribution structures along the Gulf Coast to standards implemented after Katrina and Rita, continue to move the bar higher by reevaluating current standards using the latest weather data. In addition, a comprehensive resilience plan needs to include the strategic placement of assets to allow higher-risk communities to recover more quickly. For example, MicroGrid's Distributed Energy Resources and the deployment of generators, Leo highlighted to certain critical customers and the aftermath of storms could be very helpful in supporting communities as they recover.

I go into more depth on this in our conversations with EEI. In addition to physical resilience, our regulators know the importance of a healthy credit at the operating companies to support customers. And they have put in place time-tested cost recovery mechanisms such as securitization and storm reserves to support that need. We are fortunate that in looking to recover the 2020 and 2021 storm costs, we are starting with some of the lowest rates in the country. We have significant electrification growth potential that could help pay for incremental customer-centric investments and future storm costs. All of these will support our credit as our regulators and key stakeholders aligned with us around a strong, resilient acceleration plan. In addition, we continue to execute on the exit of EWC, and we're less than a year from completing our plan.

The resulting improvements were recognized by S&P last fall through our improved business risk profile and by Moody's, just this past quarter through changes to our rating thresholds. Those changes remain in place and our ratings reflect future storm risk. As a result, we were able to reduce our 2021 to 2024 equity need. Combined with our ATM transactions, our future equity need is more than 50% lower than the $2.5 billion communicated at Analyst Day last year. Moving to Slide 11. We have a clear line of sight on the remainder of the year. And for the third year in a row, we are narrowing our adjusted EPS guidance. In this case, for 2021 to $5.90 to $6.10. We are also affirming our longer-term outlooks of five percent to seven percent adjusted EPS growth and extending the 2024. Our confidence in our solid base plan continues to grow, and a key expression of that confidence is the dividend.

For the last several years, we've discussed our goal to align our dividend growth with our adjusted EPS growth. Our Board of Directors recently declared a $0.06 increase in our quarterly common dividend, which is now $1.01 per share. That's a six percent increase as planned. We expect to continue this growth trend going forward, obviously, subject to Board approval. That's good news for our owners to provide the capital needed to meet our customers' evolving needs. Today, we are executing on key deliverables, and we have a solid base plan to meet or exceed our strategic and financial objectives. In less than a week, Leo, Rod and I will be imported to meet with many of you in person for the first time in almost two years. We'll provide our typical updates on considerations for next year's earnings expectations and will provide our preliminary three-year capital plan, including a positive update on our expectation for renewables. We'll also talk about the significant long-term customer-centric investment beyond our current outlooks from renewables, clean electrification and acceleration of our system resilience. We're excited about these opportunities ahead and look forward to talking to you about all of it at EEI.

And now the Entergy team is available to answer questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Our first question comes from Shahriar Pourreza with Guggenheim.

Shahriar Pourreza -- Guggenheim -- Analyst

Good morning, Guys. And just a quick question here, starting maybe high level, Leo, if it's OK. With kind of the regulatory complaints from New Orleans, do you have a sense for how the council wants to proceed at this point? I mean, obviously, they're looking for input into everything from operational response to ultimate ownership of the assets. Do you envision a path where you don't own the assets anymore? Or on the contrary, is there a negotiated outcome where the city authorizes incremental spending like more transmission interconnection funded by E&O customers to address their concern.

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Thanks, Shar. I'd say, first of all, obviously, what we've been doing recently with the council is we've got through the formula rate plan and got those rates in effect, both council, us as well as the LPSC and others, as I had mentioned, we're all aligned on approaching the federal government or offsets to customer costs through potentially CDBG funds and then even in the future in terms of storm hardening as it relates to infrastructure. So that's really been where we are. In terms of what's been going on recently, our focus has been really on how do we get the next steps done and what's the logical progression to what we want to do, and that is to support the credit of E&O. As it relates to those other items, they're still out there, and we plan to cooperate with the counsel as they go forward. In most of those instances, we're still wanting to hear from them in terms of what their objectives are as it relates to whether it's the ownership structure or what have you.

So those are processes that they began to the extent that they have objectives, we'll work collaboratively with them to meet those needs. And we think that however it works out, it will work out fine for us and for them.

Shahriar Pourreza -- Guggenheim -- Analyst

Got it. Perfect. Thank you for that Leo. And then just lastly for me. And then I know you sort of touched on it a little bit around your prepared comments. And it's been obviously an immediate question with investors is just around the storms and maybe the expenses that were incurred. Can we just maybe get an update on some of the other mitigating factors per customer bill headroom, and you obviously talked about volumetric growth and the macro backdrop. But there's obviously -- and also there's work you're doing with the LPSC and New Orleans to get federal support. But how are you, I guess, thinking about other charges rolling off and potentially having the bill headroom to continue kind of investing in capex, especially as we're seeing your 2024 numbers in line with the six percent midpoint growth in 2024. So could we assume this run rate remains healthy despite some of the near-term concerns around bill pressure and escalating storm issues?

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Shar, this is Drew. I'll tackle that first, and then I'll let Rod, Leo pitch in. So I'll mention a couple of things. First of all, the securitization is what we're moving forward with in Texas and Louisiana for the recent storms. But there's also a bunch of securitizations is also still rolling off, and that includes costs associated with Ike and Texas. I think that comes rolls off next year. Similar in Louisiana, Gustav and Ike are rolling off and even Isaac costs are going to start to roll off maybe in 2024. So those are relatively near term that can take some of the pressure off of the securitization costs. Also natural gas prices, there's been a lot of discussion about natural gas prices. Obviously, a lot of people are experiencing higher natural gas prices and highlights some of the investments we've made in high-efficiency CCGTs, the diversification in our fleet for nuclear, it also highlights the stronger business case for solar. But the forward curve for natural gas is somewhat, as you know, backwardated.

And the prices get pretty low. In fact, if you just go out a couple of years, our internal forecasts are higher than what the NYMEX curve would say by the time you get out to something like 2024. So that's -- we don't necessarily view that as a long-term problem. Certainly, it's a challenge for our customers right now. And starting with Winter Storm Uri and the price spikes then. But we've already recovered all of those costs, and we're moving forward. And then finally, for some of the growth capital that's out there, we highlighted the three areas associated with the significant potential investments, starting with resilience and accelerating our resilience program, that's really kind of in lieu of future securitization to the extent that we can put more resilience in place than what we were already planning that would offset the future securitization costs.

So that's a different portion of the bill, so to speak, than we would normally see. And then, of course, with renewables, the fuel costs, the O&M associated with that. And if you look at our capital plan, and we'll talk about this at EEI, there's been quite a bit of rotation in our capital plan in the generation space from future CCGTs to renewables. And so that's taking up bill space that we are already planning to use. And then finally, the clean electrification, as Leo mentioned in his remarks, that includes incremental sales, and that should provide space for that incremental investment. So we believe that all of that should -- there are spaces for all of this to happen and even accelerate as we go forward in the next few years.

Shahriar Pourreza -- Guggenheim -- Analyst

Got it. Got it. I think that was helpful. Thank you for that. Appreciated it guys. So we did it right.

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Shahr.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.

Brandon Travis -- JPMorgan -- Analyst

Hi. This is actually Brandon Travis on for Jeremy. Thanks for having me. First question, I'll follow up with a second one. Can you just comment on the Build Back Better framework and the implications it may have on Entergy and its current form? And then just particularly as it relates to nuclear hydrogen and renewable ahead of your plan refresh at EEI?

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Sure, sure. And there's a lot in there. The -- certainly, as we look for support for things like hydrogen and support for things like existing nuclear, we view all of that in addition to continued support for renewables, we view all that as positive toward our ability to keep a low-cost profile of the future benefits associated with our capital plan. We're really, really -- I guess I'll start by saying I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be an infrastructure bills that will be passed. It's -- every day, there's new news one way or the other in terms of how that's going, depending on who you hear from. But as you know, we are pretty well positioned in the hydrogen space. We have a significant fleet of existing nuclear plants.

We're deploying a lot of new renewables. So all of the -- that focus on tax credits, particularly production tax credits, is really -- we view that as highly supportive of what we are already planning on working forward with. And we would anticipate having the capability, at least as we're interpreting things today, and I know there's a lot of devil in the details to come to be able to utilize as much of that as we can for the benefit of our customers. But again, as you know, we're very excited about the hydrogen space. As I mentioned in my remarks, we made the filing associated with getting the Orange County Advanced Power Station, which will be hydrogen capable, approved in Texas.

With all the hydrogen infrastructure that's around us that will be very, very important for not only us but for the industry as we look to utilize long-duration storage, a critical factor in anyone's ability to get to net-zero by 2050. And I'd also say that's well supported by the fact that the industrial gas customers in our service territory are all exploring green, blue and pink hydrogen as well. And so I think specifically, we'll have to see exactly where everything ends up, if it gets done, but we see it as really a way for us to accelerate what we're already trying to do.

Brandon Travis -- JPMorgan -- Analyst

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. And then I was just curious on what drove the delay on the Sunflower Solar project. If you could say that it was maybe supply chain related or if there's anything else specific that you can point to there? Thanks.

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Yes. It wasn't really supply chain related, It's just some on-site challenges that our partner ran into, but we expected to be constructed early next year, and then we'll proceed on with it.

Brandon Travis -- JPMorgan -- Analyst

Got it. Thanks for that other vision.

Operator

Our next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for the time. So just first off, I'll leave some of the bigger details for EEI, but just following up here on the opportunities around renewables and the reconciliation, Bill. I mean -- to the extent of which direct pay happens here, just how meaningful could this be, especially given the prospective acceleration that you all are talking about coming with EEI here?

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

You're talking about the refundable PTCs...

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

Yes, the refundability and how that improves your credit metrics, hopefully.

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Yes, that would certainly help, but will also potentially change some of the investment profile that we have because right now, we're assuming tax equity partners for all of our own transactions to facilitate the investment tax credit today. And to the extent that there are refundable PTCs that are available and it's more economic for our customers, then I think that we would be moving more toward 100% ownership instead of something that looks like 70%, 75% ownership of each facility.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

Got it. Right. So it's both capital opportunity and credit metric enhancing? Or you're saying it's not decisively credit enhancing because of the higher capital and you haven't updated the equity component yet either.

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Yes. I mean, it probably helped a little bit, but it's -- I don't know if it's going to -- it's more neutral, I would think, for us right now.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

Got it. Okay. That's good color. Thank you. And then separately, a little bit further afield here. Any progress on transmission here in CRE? I mean I know that's been out there for a bit. Obviously, you've got some other sector resolving or desettling their issues here. Any thoughts?

Rod West -- Group President, Utility Operations

This is Rod. On the CRE front, short answer is no, the litigation matters that have been pending for some time, as we shared before, FERC doesn't have any specified time line. We are hopeful that between the end of this year, beginning of 2022, we'll begin to see some resolution, I think starting first with the ROE cap structure matter. But the short answer is no material changes because it's all in FERC's domain at this point.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

All right. Excellent. Well, I'll leave it to EEI to follow up with you for the guys. Best of luck.

See you soon.

Operator

Our next question comes from Durgesh Chopra with Evercore ISI.

Durgesh Chopra -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Hi. I'll set it back to someone else, my questions have been already asked and answered. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Hi. Good morning. By the way, Rod, my team is putting in a good word for [Indecipherable]

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

No comments...

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

We've got two graduates. So -- just first on the -- on the support from the federal government. And could you just talk a little bit more about the path to kind of -- is there certain bills? Is this just going to be an executive order? or Just -- can you just talk a little bit more about how we'll learn about this?

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So I'll start and let Rod jump in because Rod has actually been down this path before post Katrina as it relates to CDBG funds that were acquired for New Orleans. As you know, Governor Edwards has made an appeal to the government for funds to support recovery for a variety of reasons as it relates to 2020 storms as well as Hurricane Ida. And in those requests of the administration, he's put in about $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion for utility restoration offsets for our customers. So the process has been for us to work with our congressional delegation to the LPSC, the City Council and the governor try and convince effectively the federal government to appropriate dollars to go. They would go through HUD to the state in the form of community development block grants, and then we are also positioning for HUD to provide opportunity for a waiver so that the governor can actually allocate those dollars to investor-owned utilities in addition to what munis and co-ops and housing and other things that obviously are very, very important.

So we're working through that process right now. A lot of us have spent time with our delegations. We've spent time at the White House. We're spending time with the agency secretaries. So all of that is in place to try and work toward offsetting the costs associated with not only Hurricane Ida, but this would also go back to 2020 storms, which is also part of the Governor's request. I don't know,

Rod, if you have anything.

Rod West -- Group President, Utility Operations

Yes. And I guess the only thing that remains uncertain is the timing. Just like I made reference to FERC and some of the SIRI things before, there is no specific timetable for the administration Congress or HUD to act on the governor's request. It's now in their hands. I think the most significant development from our vantage point is that we have clear alignment among the delegation and express support from the White House and our governor for the utility customers. That's a big deal. As we think back to our experiences during Katrina, it took a while to get that alignment that the objective of offsetting on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the regulatory compact impact of storms on customer bills. There's no lack of alignment around the desire to achieve that. So that part, we've been able to close the gap on quicker than in prior storm or disaster events now comes the ultimate decision-making process of allocating those funds to the states so that the governor could [Indecipherable] so time line is uncertainty.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. And then the same alignment as you talked about focusing on better resiliency. I mean I think you've talked about how your newer polls have held up well to these two storms and -- but there's just a huge amount of poll replacement that could be needed to broadly do that. So just as you're -- as we're thinking about this, is this something that would likely end up being done through kind of a rate base type mechanism or something different than that?

Rod West -- Group President, Utility Operations

If we were to accelerate the capital program, the short answer is yes, that if we're -- obviously, we're mindful of affordability in this conversation. But if we were accelerating a resiliency build-out, you would expect that we would seek some type of alignment from the regulators with some type of recovery rider that might operate out -- might have to operate outside of an existing FRP or some adjustment to the FRP to attack this specific asset kind of renewal and resiliency plan. So it play out on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis, as you know. But yes, I think the answer to your question is yes, it would play as a rate base play but on an accelerated basis outside of the normal rate making.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. And that's helpful. And then just on the -- as you mentioned, you lowered the equity financing need by more than half when you did the update a month or two ago. Just any better sense on timing? And are you still looking at options other than just straight equity issuance to facilitate that?

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Steve, this is Drew. So we haven't updated anything except what we've said before. That's through 2024. And we've also said that we could accomplish all of this through the ATM program. It's -- that doesn't mean that we aren't looking at blocks or preferreds. Those are still out there. But we would look to do those opportunistically depending on market conditions. And we've been executing successfully with the ATM over the last several months. We'll continue to do that unless, like I said, an opportunistic point comes along, we can execute with the block. But otherwise, we'll just continue to complete with our ATM, and we should get it done, fairly quickly would be my guess.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our last question comes from Jonathan Arnold with Vertical Research.

Jonathan Arnold -- Vertical Research -- Analyst

Good morning, Guys. Just a couple -- from your comments at the beginning, there's no sort of outstanding issue with the New Orleans City Council was good to hear. But I recall at one point, they were -- they sort of prevented you from implementing the formula rate is, does the decision effectively last week, just really move you beyond that? Is that what we're saying?

Rod West -- Group President, Utility Operations

Yes. This is Rod. Yes. The decision to implement the FRP basically obviates the conversation around any pushback on the normal operation of the formula rate plan as we had settled with the council. So that is net positive in the continuing discussions with the council.

Jonathan Arnold -- Vertical Research -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. And just more broadly, there's started to be -- I feel some noise around the cost benefit of Entergy's membership of MISO in some of your jurisdictions. And I'm just curious whether you have any perspective as to whether we might see any changes and what kind of -- what venue or forum.

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

So, Jonathan, obviously, our participation in MISO to date has been very valuable to our customers. We've saved about $1.75 billion, nominally over the period of time since 2014 when we joined into 2013. So certainly, there's been a benefit to MISO, where we see our regulators taking issue and where actually we're supportive of them is just making sure that we get the allocation of costs of major transmission projects done correctly. And making sure that as we would like to see that the people get the benefit to major transmission upgrades are the ones who actually bear the cost of major transmission upgrades as opposed to people who don't get any benefit bearing that cost. So we're aligned with our regulators in that concept, in that theory. We're certainly not in a position where we're looking to exit MISO at any point in time. We entered MISO because of the benefits. We've obviously seen those benefits. But as the world evolves and as the capital plans evolve and the transition to renewables evolve and differently north versus south, we just need to make sure that we continue to evolve the process cost allocation in a thoughtful way. That's all.

Jonathan Arnold -- Vertical Research -- Analyst

Great. Thanks, Leo..

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

I'll now turn the call back over to Bill Abler for closing remarks.

Bill Abler -- Vice President Of Investor Relations

Thank you, Kevin, and thanks to everyone for participating this morning. Our quarterly report on Form 10-Q is due to the SEC on November five and provides more details and disclosures about our financial statements. Events that occur prior to the date of our 10-Q filing that provide additional evidence of conditions that existed at the date of the balance sheet would be reflected in our financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Also as a reminder, we maintain a web page as part of Entergy's Investor Relations website called Regulatory and Other Information, which provides key updates on regulatory proceedings and important milestones on our strategic execution. While some of this information may be considered material information, you should not rely exclusively on this page for all relevant company information. And this concludes our call. Thank you very much.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Duration: 46 minutes

Call participants:

Bill Abler -- Vice President Of Investor Relations

Leo P. Denault -- Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer

Andrew Drew Marsh -- Executive Vice President And Chief Financial Officer

Rod West -- Group President, Utility Operations

Shahriar Pourreza -- Guggenheim -- Analyst

Brandon Travis -- JPMorgan -- Analyst

Julien Dumoulin-Smith -- Bank of America -- Analyst

Durgesh Chopra -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Jonathan Arnold -- Vertical Research -- Analyst

More ETR analysis

All earnings call transcripts