Garrick J. Rochow
President, Chief Executive Officer & Director at CMS Energy
Thank you, Sri, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm pleased to share we've delivered another strong quarter and continue to be ahead of plan for the year. I'll walk through the specifics in a moment, but I couldn't be more pleased with the strong execution demonstrated by the team, both operationally and financially. We continue to deliver every day for our customers, coworkers and for you, our investors. Earlier this month, we completed the sale of EnerBank, grossing over $1 billion in proceeds. I want to thank the entire team that brought this to close. The sale of the bank simplifies and focuses our business model squarely on energy, primarily the regulated utility, an important step as we continue to lead the clean energy transformation. The proceeds from this sale will fund key initiatives in our utility business related to safety, reliability, resiliency and our clean energy transformation. As shared in previous calls, we have eliminated our equity needs from 2022 through 2024. Furthermore, Rejji will highlight in his prepared remarks while we have continued to reduce this year's equity needs as well. The keyword there, continued. As we double down on the clean energy transformation, I'm also pleased to share that we received approval for our Voluntary Green Pricing program, which would add an additional 1,000 megawatts of owned renewable generation to our growing renewable portfolio. This program is in high demand and currently oversubscribed. And more importantly, it's what our customers are asking for, an important step in offering renewable energy solutions for our customers.
As we prepare for the grid of the future, we have a highly visible and detailed capital plans outlined in our recently filed electric distribution infrastructure investment plan. This plan provides a 5-year view of the projects down to the circuit level where we plan to invest to ensure the reliability and resiliency of our electric infrastructure and aligns with our operational and financial plans. As always, we balance these investments with customer affordability. Our prices remain competitive as the average residential customer pays about $2 a day to heat their home and $4 a day to keep the lights on. And because we know our most vulnerable customers still struggle, our team has mobilized resources at the state and federal levels to ensure their protection. In fact, as we approach the winter heating season, our 90-day arrears are back to prepandemic levels with an 80% reduction in our uncollectible accounts. Our commitment to identifying and eliminating waste means that we keep our prices affordable. This commitment is evident in our results. In the first nine months of this year, we surpassed our full year cost reduction target of more than $40 million. The CE Way is in our DNA, and we continue to deliver savings in the near term and well into the future.
Speaking of the future, this year, we grew our EV program with PowerMIFleet. This is part of our long-term planning in collaboration with Michigan businesses, governments and school systems looking to electrify their vehicle fleets. Within just a few months of the program introduction, we were working with nearly 20 different customers on their fleets and have another 50 who have indicated interest in the next tranche, exceeding our expectations. This is an important contribution to our long-term sales growth. And finally, one of my favorites which speaks to our culture, our coworkers and our ability to attract the best talent. Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion continues to be recognized nationwide and most recently by Forbes, where we were ranked the #1 utility in the U.S. for both America's best employers for women and #1 for diversity, delivering excellence every day continues to position the business for sustainable long-term growth. Strong execution leads to strong results. but two are linked. One drives the other. In early August, we experienced one of the worst storms in our company's history. Our team established and into command structure to deploy resources and took decisive action to restore customers. We had a record number of crews on our system. The speed of our response led to the highest positive customer sentiment we have ever received during a major storm. I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to thank all our coworkers who responded to the call. During the storm, we had more than 3,700 members of our team working around the clock to safely restore customers. Like we do every year, through storms, pandemics, and on seasonal weather, we continue to deliver. And when there's upside, we reinvest.
This is the CMS model of responding to changing conditions that allows us to deliver consistently year after year. Year-to-date, we've delivered ahead of plan with adjusted earnings per share of $2.18 for continuing operations. Our strong performance, coupled with the completion of the EnerBank transaction and the financial flexibility that provides -- gives us further confidence in our ability to meet our full year guidance, which we've raised to $2.63 to $2.65 from $2.61 to $2.65 for continuing operations. For 2022, we are reaffirming our adjusted full year guidance of $2.85 to $2.87 per share. And our continued strong performance in 2021 builds momentum for 2022 and beyond. Longer term, we are committed to growing our adjusted EPS toward the high end of our 6% to 8% growth range as we highlighted on our Q2 call. As previously stated, we are committed to growing the dividend in 2022 and beyond. That's what you expect, why you own us, and we know it's a big part of our value. As we move forward, we continue to see long-term dividend growth of 6% to 8% with a targeted payout ratio of about 60% over time. Many of you have asked about gas prices and the impact on our business and more importantly, our customers. Let me tell you about our gas business. We have one of the largest storage field in the U.S. and compressing resources to match. That is a significant advantage. We started putting natural gas into our storage field in April and continued throughout the summer when natural gas prices were low.
Right now, our fields are full and ready to deliver for our customers' heating needs throughout the winter months. Most of the gas is already locked in at just under $3 per thousand cubic feet, which is well below current levels in the spot market and offers tremendous customer value. Given the operational certainty of storage as well as the financial protection of a pass-through clause, our customers stay safe and warm all winter long and have affordable bills. Heat in Michigan is not an option. And we don't leave it up to the market. We buy, store and deliver. That's what we do. Michigan's strong regulatory construct is known across the industry as one of the best. It includes the integrated resource plan process, which is a result of legislation designed to ensure timely recovery of the necessary investments to advance safe, reliable and clean energy in our state. Michigan's forward-looking test years and 3-year pre-approval structure of the IRP process gives visibility on our future growth. It enables the company and the commission to align on long-term generation supply planning and provide certainty as we invest in our clean energy transformation. Here's what I like about our recently filed IRP. There is a win in it for everyone. It is a remarkable plan that addresses many of the interests of our stakeholders and ensure supply reliability. It reduces costs and it delivers industry-leading carbon emission reductions. It's clean. We continue to have constructive dialogue with the staff and other stakeholders, and we anticipate seeing their positions later today. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Rejji.
