Westar Energy Inc Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-08-08 12:40:26.0

Tags: Westar Energy Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions). And your first question comes from the line of Greg Gordon. You may proceed.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Bill Moore

Good morning, Greg.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

Just to review the earnings for the quarter and try to separate things that were temporary versus things that were more ongoing in nature. It looks to me like you've actually recovered your retail fuel costs and purchase power costs for residential, commercial and industrial that were not subject to these special contracts. So, the $0.10 negative delta quarter-over-quarter and earnings related to gross margins from serving your customers was really related primarily to getting squeezed on those contracts of which the majority have now dropped off?

Bill Moore

Yeah. There are four contracts, Greg. They were I think 10-year contracts that didn't have a fuel clause in them and obviously they are rolling off, but right now there is still some in place. The biggest one rolled off at the end of June and it was two-thirds of the volume of those four contracts.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

So, because you were purchasing higher cost power because of forced and unforced outages, those flip-flop from being slim positive margin to a massive negative margin in the quarter?

Bill Moore

No, they still made money but obviously not the money we hoped they would make.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

Okay. They made less money?

Bill Moore

Yeah.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

So their margins contracted, but the majority of them have rolled of if your plants perform for the rest of the duration of the contracts, historic levels of profitability should be restored?

Bill Moore

Yeah. Let me give you an illustration. Certainly the year before last, and I think even last year those special contracts were actually higher than our basic tariffs.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

Okay.

Bill Moore

But they didn't have the fuel cost, and obviously when we had the quarter where we had extended outages and higher replacement costs without the fuel costs, obviously that hurt us.

Greg Gordon - Citigroup

Okay. And then the thing was O&M which really is related towards the timing of the outages, right? You're still expecting an overall growth in O&M for the year that's inline with inflation, right?

Tony Somma

Well, Greg. This is Tony. We haven't really given guidance on O&M for say, but the higher O&M was primarily related to the additional planned outages that we have this year versus last year.

 

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