Drew Marsh
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Entergy
Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. We had a very productive start to the year, with meaningful progress on activities that support our near- and long-term objectives. Today, we are reporting first quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.14. Mild weather affected these results, but we are prepared for this variability. As we have shown over the last several years, our FLEX program helps us achieve steady predictable results. We are on track for 2023 results in line with our guidance, and we remain well-positioned to achieve our long-term 6% to 8% growth outlooks.
Our focus on creating sustainable value for our four key stakeholders, customers, employees, communities, and owners, is the foundation of our strategy. It's at the center of everything we do. Recently, JUST Capital and CNBC named Entergy to the JUST 100 list, which highlights companies that are doing the right thing for all their stakeholders. We are honored, because our inclusion on this list is an acknowledgment that we are living up to our commitment.
Serving all our stakeholders starts with understanding what our customers need from us. To meet those needs, we are investing to improve reliability and resilience, and significantly expand our clean energy footprint. This will not only help our current customers become more successful, but will also attract new customers. So far this year, we have installed or replaced over 400 transmission structures with new resilient designs, including critical river crossing lines. We also completed transmission interconnections for two new Entergy-owned renewable resources.
One example of a transmission project that will improve resilience and reliability is a recently completed project in Southwest Louisiana where we upgraded transmission lines graded to withstand 150 mile per hour winds, replaced older poles with resilient steel structures, installed new higher capacity power lines, and added automated switching capability to improve reliability.
In Southeast Louisiana and in Texas, we are building new substations and distribution power lines that will support residential and business growth in those areas and reduce stress on existing substations. In addition, we installed or replaced more than 5,000 wood distribution poles with newer more resilient designs. Collectively, our team continues to focus on operational excellence to deliver stakeholder outcomes across all facets of our business.
We also continue to be a critical local partner supporting strong economic development, working to bring new businesses, new jobs, and new tax base to the communities we serve. As you know, we expect significant industrial sales growth over the next several years. While the broader market is contemplating recession concerns, our region's growth story remains intact. Key strategic value drivers continue to be supportive. The LNG, ammonia, and refining sectors are generally short on supply and the deficit will likely not be meaningfully affected by a recession.
Other sectors such as ethylene, PVC, methanol, and steel may see some market pullback, but the Gulf Coast has the lowest-cost producers. So plants in our service area should be the last to be curtailed. Meanwhile, the passage of the IRA is accelerating development in the clean energy transition space. We are seeing very strong interest in our service area, which has the potential to increase and extend our 6% long-term industrial sales growth rate as incentive rules are finalized and turn into financed projects.
One example of a potential project fueled by the IRA is the St. Charles Clean Fuels project, which is exploring whether to build a $4.6 billion blue ammonia production plant in St. Rose, Louisiana. The new facility will produce up to 8,000 metric tons per day of blue ammonia, and would rely on carbon capture technology to sequester more than 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions. Our underlying 6% industrial growth rate does not rely on these IRA tailwinds, and we continue to see a lot of activity in the traditional industrial segments we serve.
There are some noteworthy developments in recent months, including Golden Triangle Polymers, which held its groundbreaking for a state-of-the-art polyethylene plant in Orange County, Texas. In addition, Sempra announced that the company reached its financial investment decision and issued the final notice to proceed on Phase 1 of its Port Arthur LNG project.
A big part of meeting our customers' sustainability needs is growing our clean energy footprint, and we continue to make progress on that objective. On Monday, we held our official groundbreaking for the Orange County Advanced Power Station in Texas, hosting Governor Abbott, four of five PUCT Commissioners, and other state and local officials. That facility will ensure that we have modern and reliable infrastructure to support existing customers and the rapidly-growing customer base in our Southeast Texas region.
We will utilize turbine technology and a plant layout that can support dual-fuel capability with hydrogen in the future. The optionality helps ensure the plant's long-term viability and creates improved energy security and operational flexibility for our customers. We also continue to make progress on our objective to expand our renewables capacity to meet customer needs. Since our last call, Entergy Arkansas and Entergy Louisiana concluded evaluations of their 2022 renewable RFPs. Participation was robust and we are in negotiations for approximately 2,300 megawatts.
Turning to affordability. It remains a core tenant in our pursuit of greater sustainability and reliability for customers. To help manage bill effects of customer-centric investments, we continue to aggressively pursue customer sales growth, disciplined cost management, and federal support to offset costs. Natural gas prices have come down significantly, and coupled with the mild winter, that's further good news for customer bills. Our latest estimates for residential bill trajectories, including updated gas curves, have improved. For the system, we are now seeing a three-year annual growth rate of less than 1% from 2022 through 2025. That's roughly half the level we are expecting a few months ago.
In the quarter, we made regulatory -- meaningful regulatory progress against our objectives. Entergy Texas has reached settlement on all material issues with parties in its base rate case, and we expect to file the settlement with the PUCT in the next few weeks. Entergy Mississippi filed its annual formula rate plan in March. Mississippi's efficient mechanism supports continued customer-centric investments and supports our financial outlooks.
Interim rates became effective on April 1st. Entergy Louisiana's formula rate plan will expire after this year's filing. We are evaluating options to renew the current FRP, and we're also preparing for a potential rate case filing, which will be submitted this summer. As we've laid out, Entergy Louisiana is investing significant capital to support our customers' growth and their demand for greater resilience and clean energy. This growth is critical for Louisiana and its local communities. We need to ensure that our rate constructs provide the opportunity for fair and timely recovery, which will allow us to effectively source the capital, while maintaining utility credit. Either an FRP renewal or a rate case path should allow enough time for rates to be effective in September 2024, which should keep us on our normal cadence. If we file a rate case, we will request a new FRP starting with the 2025 filing year.
Entergy Louisiana also filed a request to streamline the procurement and approval processes for up to three gigawatts of solar resources. This is in addition to the nearly 2.5 gigawatts from previous or ongoing RFPs. If the new processes are approved, we can bring additional renewables to construction faster and at a lower-cost and risk, materially improving our ability to meet our customers' accelerating demand for clean energy.
For our accelerated resilience in grid hardening filings, Entergy Louisiana received a procedural schedule in its docket. Next up is the commission's engineering report and testimony to be filed in August. Hearings are scheduled in January of next year. However, there is the potential to receive a decision this year through a settlement with parties and that remains a possibility with broad stakeholder alignment on the need for more resilient investments. In a separate, but important docket, the LPSC staff outlined a process and an evaluation procedure for utilities in Louisiana to follow, which creates a solid roadmap for Entergy Louisiana's resilient investment.
Entergy New Orleans filed its updated resilience plan with the City Council. The $1 billion 10-year plan reflects significant stakeholder input. Like Louisiana, New Orleans is requesting approval for the first five years of the program, and we are targeting a decision from the Council by year-end. In Texas, the Electric Infrastructure Resiliency Act has been proposed in both the state House and Senate. The bill, if passed, would require the Commission to act within 180 days of utility filing a resiliency plan. Certain prudently incurred costs would be recovered through a variety of mechanisms. We will continue to work with our regulators across all aspects of our business to create value for our customers and other key stakeholders. And you can find additional details on our regulatory proceedings in the appendix of our webcast presentation.
In March, our service area experienced tornadoes in Arkansas and Mississippi. The damage to our system included distribution poles, wire spans, transformers and one substation. We replaced damaged equipment with newer, more resilient assets rated to our latest standards. The restoration was completed quickly and safely with zero injuries, and for that, I'm extremely grateful to our teams.
In addition to restoration, we responded quickly to provide community support. Entergy shareholders committed $150,000 to the American Red Cross to provide shelter, food, water, mental health counseling, and other services to households impacted by the tornadoes. In addition, more than 150 Entergy employees came into the effected region and volunteered their time by assisting with clean-up, providing meals, organizing supply drives, and staffing information booth to once again prove our employees unfaltering commitment to our customers and communities when they need it most.
Before concluding, I'd like to note that Entergy Mississippi is celebrating its 100th anniversary. That's a century of serving its customers and communities. To commemorate this milestone, Entergy Mississippi donated $100,000 to Extra Table, a Mississippi-based food bank, to combat food insecurity in Mississippi. That's $1,000 for every year of operations. In addition, Entergy volunteers packed 2,500 meal kits. This is the first event of a multi-phase program that will ultimately provide 100,000 meals. Giving back to community through philanthropy, volunteerism, and advocacy is integral to Entergy's winning[Phonetic] its vision statement of We Power Life.
We've had a productive start to 2023. We are focused on successfully delivering value for our key stakeholders, and we will continue to successfully achieve the milestones that keep us on track to deliver steady, predictable earnings and dividend growth. To do this, we are working to improve operational and regulatory outcomes, support our customers' industrial growth and economic development in our region, invest in renewables, clean energy, and resilience acceleration to support our customers' demands, and execute with financial discipline to strengthen our balance sheet and become more competitive.
I'll now turn the call over to Kimberly, who will review our financial results for the quarter.
