Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Barry Klein – Citigroup
Barry Klein – Citigroup
On the O&M side, you mentioned numbers about 2 to 3% it sounded like over the last few years but that was in a higher volume growth environment, would you expect those numbers to come down or are those pretty much, you expect that to be a good run rate for the next year or two.
Jeffrey Shaw
I think George as he was talking about the operations and maintenance expenses gave a historical sketch. Clearly we’re focused on those expenses. I do think it would be impractical for us to say that we would have no increase in expenses. There are many things that are unpredictable that we have to contend with. We do not know for instance what the cost of fuel might be. We don’t know where the market is going to go and how that might impact pension expense.
We don’t know specifically what might happen with bad debt expense although I will say fortunately our average customer bill in the southwest is much, much lower on a comparative basis then you would see anywhere else in the Midwest or the northeast or places where you have cold weather. So while bad debt expense is something yes we contend with, it is never the magnitude that some of the other utilities contend with.
So I think we do have employees, we do have employee benefits, we’ve been able to keep our healthcare costs under control. I think we will definitely be able to keep our expenses at a lower level as long as we don’t have anything that’s unexpected that comes along.
Barry Klein – Citigroup
You mentioned the number of growth expected to be 1% or less for 2009, is that what you’ve seen so far through the year if you exclude the impact of weather.
George Biehl
I guess we’re so early in the year, I would say yes but its just too early to tell. I guess I would answer it this way, we certainly haven’t seen so far any indication that has significantly deviated from that. Once again, and I don’t want to be too repetitive here but at some point in time we are going to see these structures, these single family homes, LDC basically, are going to be occupied and we’re going to see customer growth again. But we really haven’t seen it turn around but then again we only have data through January.
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