Just Energy Group Inc at CIBC Whistler Institutional Investor Conference
Jan 22, 2016 AM EST
JE.TO - Just Energy Group Inc
Just Energy Group Inc at CIBC Whistler Institutional Investor Conference
Jan 22, 2016 / 05:10PM GMT
==============================
Corporate Participants
==============================
* Deborah Merril
Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO
* Patrick McCullough
Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO
==============================
Conference Call Participants
==============================
* Kevin Chiang
CIBC World Markets - Analyst
==============================
Presentation
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [1]
------------------------------
So maybe we'll get started here. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning for the Just Energy presentation. It's my pleasure to introduce from Just Energy Deborah Merril, President and Co-Chief Executive Officer, as well as Patrick McCullough, CFO. Deb was appointed to her current role as President and Co-CEO back in April of 2014. Prior to this, she held the position of Executive Vice President of Commercial Sales and Senior Vice President of Commercial Sales and Marketing. Prior to April 2010, Deb was Vice President of the Just Energy Texas division.
Pat is a relatively new addition to the Just Energy team, been with the Company since August of 2014. Prior to that, he was CEO of Amonix, prior to 2014.
I think people are pretty familiar with the Just Energy story, but maybe I'll kick it off with the fact that there's been dramatic changes at the Company over the past two years, especially under the new leadership team. Maybe you could spend a few minutes giving us a sense of what's changed in terms of your debt levels, a change in your strategy, the change in your capital priorities over the past 24 months?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [2]
------------------------------
Sure. So, we started -- when I started back two years ago in April, I was co-CEO with my other half, Jay Lewis. We really took a look at the Company and I've been in this industry for almost 20 years now, so it felt like we had a really good opportunity for us to really get the Company set on the right path. So the first order of business was to make sure that we reduce the debt, reduce -- get rid of non-core assets. Let's refocus of the business and what we are good at. So within the first year, we had sold NHS, which is a water heater rental business based in Ontario. It really wasn't core to what we wanted to do going forward. We wanted to look at bundling and services around energy that we could take and scale across multiple markets. That really wasn't it and it weighed down our balance sheet to the tune of almost CAD300 million, so we wanted to get rid of that, which we sold successfully for CAD505 million, which was a very -- a nice -- gave us a lot of room, gave us some cash as well for us to start doing some other things.
We also sold a commercial solar business that was kind of an end-to-end solar business. We did all of the engineering, all of the installation. We did kind of from start to finish. So, we took very heavy CapEx and we said you know what, we like solar but that really wasn't how we wanted to go to market with solar. We wanted to do it in a way that would be much more efficient for us. So, we got rid of that. So that was the first step.
We brought in Pat, which was a great addition to our management team. He's got a lot of great experience in solar and other things.
So then we kind of set about creating a lot of discipline around margin and efficiency. So we spent the first year kind of cleaning through that stuff. This year, we've seen a lot of good results from that. We've increased margin year-over-year and just kind of getting the workings back in place.
And now really what we looking at and what's the exciting stuff, which, as I look at this industry over the last 20 years, the last two years have been the most exciting of the entire time I've been in this business. You know, think about all of the innovations around energy and energy technology, battery storage, smart thermostats, smart meters, data that we can use to help customers be more efficient and better with their home energy use. That didn't exist three years ago. So now the fact that we have the Company on very solid footing, we still have some work to do on the balance sheet which Pat can talk about, but we really have kind of freed up a lot of the weights around us for us to really focus on the opportunity ahead of us.
And really, for us, the opportunity is we want to change the way people, this industry is viewed. We want to be the consumer focused, all about value products delivered to customers that really creates a good customer experience and start to bring in these technologies like battery backups, solar and a lot of things that maybe even customers don't even think they have available to them. We can start to bundle these things together and really provide some real value to customers.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [3]
------------------------------
If I could add to the capital question, in terms of capital priorities for the business, we'll be free cash flowing between $25 million and $50 million per year this year and next.
And we are still continuing to delever. Delevering remains a core priority for us. We've got ourselves to 2.96 net debt to EBITDA this past quarter. We really want to be close to 2. That's where we start to feel good about the balance sheet that we've built.
We've been telling shareholders very directly that we would like to protect the CAD0.50 a share dividend. We can afford it, provided that we can restructure and refinance our longer-term instruments. And then we'd really like to attack the dilutive mechanisms that exist on our balance sheet today and try to replace those without new dilution, meaning if we can take the converts, the Eurobond, off the board over the next couple of quarters in the terms of the CAD330s million in a couple of years in terms of the Eurobond, we'd like to do that with new debt or high-yield type instruments where there is no dilution for the shareholders. Because if we are successful with the strategy that Deb just described, we're going to create incredible EBITDA growth, enterprise value creation for our shareholders. We want to amplify that. We don't want to find ourselves taking advantage of that and diluting shareholders because we've moved the enterprise value needle.
So, capital priority, delever first. Obviously, we'll be looking at intelligent acquisitions. That would be the only thing kind of out of the realm of that delevering story. But I think we've got to get ourselves further delevered before we get excited about acquisitive placement. Question?
==============================
Questions and Answers
------------------------------
Unidentified Audience Member [1]
------------------------------
(inaudible b microphone inaccessible)
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [2]
------------------------------
Sure. Yes. I think as everybody knows, the debt markets have gotten worse recently, not better. We are paying close attention to the Canadian Federal Bank, the US Federal Bank. We do like what interest rates are doing in Canada. The real issue is going to be capacity and what is out there for us.
We intend to tap into global markets, so we have created a market, a capital market, for ourselves in Europe with the Eurobond that was issued. It's not my favorite instrument that we have today but it has created institutional knowledge of our Company and comfort with us. There's US, say, fixed income types that may have an interest in us. And I think there is Canadian fixed income types that definitely have an interest in us.
We've had unsolicited offers that haven't met our preferences in terms of that no dilution feature. So as we look at what we are trying to do, we've got cash available to us on our balance sheet. We probably need a new instrument, probably a private placement high-yield type of instrument in the CAD300 million, CAD325 million range. Then we could take out both the CAD330 million convertibles and the high-yield bond with CPP at the same time.
There is a restriction on taking out junior instruments in the CPP high-yield bond, but they've been productive with us. We think we can either take both out together or work with CPP on restructuring the CAD330s million, which obviously mature ahead of CPP.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [3]
------------------------------
When you look at one of your growth opportunities you've highlighted over the past 12 months, it has been on the solar side. Can you tell us how the launch has gone so far the past year or so? And the US did renew extend the Renewable Energy Credit. How does that change your view on customer growth, the origination fees that you initially thought you would be receiving with this extension over the next five years?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [4]
------------------------------
Yes, so we are obviously very happy about that extension. It just provides a longer runway for us. We were going into this business regardless of whether it expired or not. We knew that we had a very -- a shorter period time for us to really take advantage of that, that larger credit, which obviously increases our margin as an originator.
So, back to your first question, we are very happy with how it's going so far. We've got a lot more to learn. As I said earlier, it's about the customer experience. It's about making sure we do this the right way. So we are testing and piloting a lot of things. We are learning. We are switching things up and kind of moving things around to see what formula works the best.
So we are in California pretty actively. We've got I think two or three sales offices right now that are out there selling. We are testing call centers to our existing customers which is going -- I said anytime you start a new business, there's a lot to learn and we want -- we're at this point continuing to absorb as much knowledge as possible.
The good thing about the ITC did for us is that it provided us not only a longer runway with the existing economics, which are very good for us, but as well as provide a lot more stability in the solar market as a whole. So, what we were finding is some of the constraints that we had where -- is there enough capacity, installation capacity, in certain markets like New York, which is very somewhat fragmented on the solar side, certain pockets work, certain pockets don't.
So, what we are finding is that we were up against some installation capacity. So as that credit extends, Pat and I both believe that we are going to see more people coming in, maybe some bigger balance sheets, people who are saying, hey, we are sitting on the sidelines for a little while maybe coming in and investing in additional capacity, additional capital that would help us, help continue to improve the products on solar. And we say one of the things we've learned in trying to be a consumer-focused company is, as we look at the solar products, they tend to be not very consumer-friendly. There are 27 underwriting criteria. Golly knows how many signatures you have to put on a piece of paper. It's a big bank kind of feel as far as a product is concerned.
So, one of the things we really would like to see is some advances in the product as well, making it easier for customers. How can we bundle off-peak power with solar to -- and try to make it much more seamless and less cumbersome while also managing risk as well? So I think that it still provides a great opportunity for us. We are even more excited than we were before.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [5]
------------------------------
If you paid attention to our investor decks over the last year, we had a geographic representation of the solar markets that we could address. And we had 10 or 12 states, even Ontario as a province, with a potential solar market in our minds. We were constrained by the life of the ITC because we often would get the question, why aren't you addressing the 30, 35 US states that actually make economic sense for solar? And the short answer was we didn't see ourselves being able to scale to 35 in a year and a half before the ITC ended. So, now, we actually have the opportunity to expand and addressable market at high margins, and it's pretty exciting from a solar potential.
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [6]
------------------------------
And more markets stay economic for longer.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [7]
------------------------------
In the past, you've mentioned that the origination fee that you are earning now is call it CAD1,500 to CAD2,000. As the tax winds its way through this new extension, how do you see the economics of solar? Does it change your I guess the positive view you have depending on where that origination fee (multiple speakers)?
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [8]
------------------------------
Yes, so we haven't announced exactly what we make on solar yet, but we have noted what Kevin said, which is the third parties that trade origination today in the market make between CAD1,500 and CAD2,000. So if we are in that range or at the high end of that range, we think we are doing a great job in solar.
Given the under-penetration of solar and this constraint that Deb was talking about, which is installation capacity, we believe the extension of the ITC, just to take her thought process a little bit further, will unlock new capital into installation assets and balance sheet or financing assets. What we expect that to do is unlock some of the penetration challenges that the overall industry has had. For us, what that means is we expect that kind of CAD1,500 to CAD2,000 to last longer where we thought it might end at the end of calendar year 2016 and then be pushed down to probably half that size with the new ITC as it was originally planned to fall from 30% down to 10%. Now that it's going to stay at 30% for the first three years before it falls to I think it's 26% and 22% -- I can't remember the specific numbers -- we expect that CAD1,500 to CAD2,000 entitlement to last for a couple of years until penetration, competition and really origination gets squeezed.
Today, origination is the hard part of the value chain. It's the thing that people are paying premiums for because it's hard to find those qualified customers who are ready to take on a 20-year financial commitment.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [9]
------------------------------
We actually have a question on the app here. Maybe I'll rephrase it a little bit. As it relates to disruptive technology, so you have Elon Musk looking at a gigabattery for the home. How disruptive or what type of challenges does that pose as you are trying to build out your solar business? Is it too small of a market for you, or is it disruptive enough that it gives you some visibility issues over the next five, 10 years?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [10]
------------------------------
We are very excited about batteries. And what I love about Elon Musk is he continues to push the envelope where if you were to look at an estimated cost of battery even six, eight months ago, what they thought the curve was for decreasing costs, so at some point it starts our very high, CAD350 per kilowatt, it goes down. We saw that, with the introduction of the Tesla home battery, it actually advanced what the estimates for cost were on batteries by seven years. So we got seven years further along that curve than we did -- than what people expected to have happen. And so there are other people that are looking at it as well.
So I think what's exciting for us is the way we look at ourselves is we want to bring these products to market. We don't -- I don't really care who wins. I just want to partner with the right people that are winning to pull those together to -- we have 2 million customers in North America, individual accounts, and we are in the UK. We are expanding to Continental Europe. So we are very excited about the opportunity to bundle batteries with solar or to use batteries as demand response potentially in commercial applications, which, you know, we are looking at testing that now with some different kinds of batteries. So, there are a lot of people playing in that market and we are watching it very closely and actually testing some of these technologies today. So, I think it just makes the value proposition for our products better, you know, bringing that to market for a customer who -- for a home or for a small business, are they really going to have the time, energy, effort and know-how to figure out how to pull that together? We've got people who have been doing solar for 20 years that work with us now that are thinking about really creative ways to pull these together.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [11]
------------------------------
Does it change how you look at the lifecycle economics of some of these customers you have? I think solar gives you an opportunity to move from a five-year contract to a 20-year contract. I presume a battery solution probably allows you to move past the five years.
How do you look at the lifecycle economics of a customer today when you think of these new products and the cross-selling capabilities? Have you started to cross-sell across your solar platform or is it still early days from that perspective?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [12]
------------------------------
It's early days from that perspective. But the way that -- what this does is it moves from a very kind of commodity-based I can sign a contract, I can switch away, you know, very low barriers to movement to a much stickier customer over a much longer period of time.
So as we look at a 20-year relationship on solar, how can -- if we do an off-peak power bundled with the solar, now all of a sudden we've got a 20-year commodity contract in addition to a 20-year customer relationship that, by the way, in four years, something else will be more economical that may not be -- doesn't make sense today. So, we can pull that in and the fact that we know the portfolio of products that are running that home, we can continue to kind of optimize that for the customer and get more value for longer-term.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [13]
------------------------------
One of the benefits of what Deb is talking about is classically we sold this commodity, which was a grid-delivered contract for electricity or natural gas. As you can start to bring things like solar and energy storage to your customers, you are playing the off-grid technologies now as well.
In deregulated markets, we can play the hybrid too where you are taking solar energy when the sun shines and grid energy when it doesn't. We want to be a retailer that delivers value in any of those scenarios. So as the war over the grid versus distributed generation plays itself out with a lot of unknowns in probably a lot of markets that are going to go one way versus the other way, we want to be able to stand on any side and in the middle and be able to deliver value to our customer. That's what a world-class consumer-oriented retail model really is. So, if Elon Musk is going to promote energy storage and accelerate that cost curve and make it more relevant to mass markets sooner, that's exciting, and that's something that we can leverage with the right partnerships to bring to market.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [14]
------------------------------
When you think of some of the products that you are testing, and I think you've talked about a flat bill product in some of your previous conference calls, how are some of these initiatives playing out? Are you seeing good customer support for them, and which ones are being elevated now as kind of some of the ones that you think are higher-margin versus some of the more plain-vanilla solutions you used to have in the past?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [15]
------------------------------
So, right now, one of our most exciting products is the flat bill because as we look at it, if I go to a customer and say, hey, buy power from me for CAD0.07 or buy it from that guy for CAD0.072, it really means nothing to a customer, especially a homeowner. But if I tell a homeowner for $80 a month you get all your gas and power and by the way, I'm going to put a smart thermostat on your wall which will make your home more efficient, which will learn over time and make your house better functioning, now all of the sudden you've solved a problem for them.
And the way we manage our risk, we are constantly managing consumption risk, so we are able to find creative products with reinsurers that help us lay that risk off anyway. So now all of a sudden, we are bringing both pieces of that puzzle to the customer.
What we found with these products, and we sell in Ontario, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, what we are finding with those products is it really distinguishes you from somebody else, because I would say that I think the retail energy industry has kind of been, up until a few years ago, has been not very forward-thinking and customer-focused. So, what these products do, it allows us to solve a problem for a customer and bring that value to them, increases margin, reduces attrition, increases customer satisfaction. So, we are seeing those metrics, all of those metrics, play out in these products.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [16]
------------------------------
Any questions from the audience? Talking about risk management, we've had a bit of a milder winter with El Nino. Can you speak to how weather impacts your results and just generally how you manage weather risk around normal consumption?
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [17]
------------------------------
Sure. So, this is something that's very near and dear to my heart. This is something I think that if you are going to be in the retail energy industry, this had better be something you are good at. I always say there are a lot of barriers. There are very few barriers to entry in this industry, but there are a lot to stay, and this is the biggest one because, fundamentally, I'm delivering power to you. I'm committing to you today to deliver power at some product, whether it's a flat bill or a fixed rate, over the next three, four, five years. What that means is that I have to anticipate four years from now what you are going to use. Well, guess what? That's impossible because what happens, it's warmer, it's colder. Weather impacts all of that.
So what we've done, and I come from a risk management background. Jay, who is the other CEO, him and I worked together for 17 years and have done this our entire career. And it's all about understanding your portfolio, looking at creative ways to lay off risk. So I'm not trying to get better margin when it's a colder winter and prices are low. I'm willing to give up that upside to protect me from December, which just happened, which was we have a lot of gas customers and if they don't use gas, I'm not making money on them.
So, what I do, or what we do, is we have a group of really smart people who are looking at volatilities and all kinds of option and weather derivatives that help us essentially protect us from about 98% of the outcomes. So, we can't really do the tail to -- probably the two tails get way too expensive for us to actually insure against, but we spend several million dollars a year going out to market and buying these products to offset risk. So for instance, if you have a month like December when volume is down significantly, customers aren't using gas. Then you have -- we have a reinsurer who pays us to protect us for that.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [18]
------------------------------
So, let me add a little nuance to it. So you can imagine that we went out and pre-brought enough gas for December to deliver to our customers. The weather doesn't show up; the customers don't use the gas. We then have to liquidate that gas and take it back to market. But supply and demand is upside down, so we might be selling at a loss back to the market.
We get a check cut to us from a reinsurance company which covers almost the entire gap from what our designed margin at normal average weather was. This is one of the reasons, just to bridge the last question, why we go to market with a flat bill product. We know that we are the furthest along in the industry in terms of taking the most conservative positions on offloading volume and price risk off of our own book. So the idea naturally is let's cut the customer into that value prop. Let's take weather volatility off of them, even though technically they are accountable for turning their thermostat up or down, let's take that accountability and let's pass it to a third-party and let's deliver a value prop there. So, as other companies that are uhedged for weather will be having a profit hit in December, we are not expecting that volume-related profit hit.
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [19]
------------------------------
And it's kind of -- the other side of it last winter, when it was cold but people were using more but prices didn't spike, we didn't get a positive upside either. So that's kind of how we make the instruments work in a more economical way, is we are happy to give up the upside to protect the downside. Again, we are just trying to manage to design margin.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [20]
------------------------------
And the extreme is Polar Vortex when you have the smaller companies that haven't taken appropriate weather hedges going bankrupt or not being able to meet the collateral needs because of the nasty weather, and that's that barrier to sustainability or survival that Deb was talking about.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [21]
------------------------------
Any questions from the audience?
We actually have a question from the Web and actually I think dovetails with some of the details you have provided with your contract. Can you speak to the cash cycle of a contract. Let's say it's three to five years in terms of commission, the cash you earned through that contract period, and how you would recognize the revenue and how you ensure you are getting the target margins so that your EBITDA has the steadiness that you are looking for year in and year out?
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [22]
------------------------------
Yes, so we obviously -- the first thing we are doing is we are playing a scaled diversification, you know, let's say a strategy to managing the risk that's suggested in the question. We are trying to be broader than electricity and gas, but we used to be gas and we added an electricity profile. We're trying to be broader than resi and commercial on a grid delivered product, but we were originally residential and we expanded into commercial.
If you look at the residential segments, there's two large ones. The largest is online and telemarketing. The commissions are paid on a residual basis over the life of the contract. That matches the cash flows and the costs with the sales. We recognize revenue at the point of delivery of energy. So, we've got some nice matching there and no dramatic working capital challenges from commission-to-sales perspective.
If you look at the door-to-door channel, we've historically paid that commission upfront. It can be clawed back if the deal doesn't stick for the first couple of months. But there is much more of a burden to paying that commission upfront.
Now, we have deemphasized the door-to-door channel on a proportionate basis of our total base. It's been running between 20% and 26% of our new sales over the past year. But nonetheless, there is a challenge to paying upfront commissions there.
The commercial business is largely paid on a residual basis. One of the things that we've talked about recently is our business change, which has constituted an accounting change, which has taken what was formerly capitalized, which were some of the upfront paid commissions on multi-year deals. It was a small segment of our commercial business. We actually ended the business practice of paying multiple years in advance. We didn't think that was good business from a cash or profit perspective. Although we are being a little bit aggressive with our broker channel relative to the market, that's the type of business we want to conduct, not the prepay a broker three years in advance type of business. What that did was it essentially took all of our sales costs on an amortized basis above the EBITDA line. It's not capitalized and taken out. We started that process this year and added $20 million roughly of cost that we've overcome and still grown through our guidance 10%. Earnings is closer to 20% if you were to look at an apples-to-apples basis on accounting. We'll have another 20% -- another $20 million headwind next year associated with the same thing.
But what we've done with the commercial business now, like the online business, is largely matched cost cash to sales so that we are not going to have so much of that upfront commission paid relative to that kind of ongoing sales basis. The challenge with doing this, when you move significantly from upfront to residual, is you start layering on these residual payments that are multi-year and until you get yourself all the way up to a more balanced and stable mix, you are going to have some reporting and some explaining to do, as we've had to explain sometimes. SG&A is not growing with sales the way that it classically would have.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [23]
------------------------------
Okay. We have a couple more minutes if there is a question in the audience.
Maybe I'll leave you with this one then. I think historically people have viewed Just Energy as a dividend growth story. I think historically the cash flow payments have been prioritized towards the dividend. You know, with the new management team in place, how do you look at the dividend now in respect to the broader strategy you have in terms of rolling out some of these products?
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [24]
------------------------------
We like to start with the investment thesis, and we like to ask people to consider what we are talking about. And we can tell you the discussions within our board meetings and within our management meetings are all about strategic growth. So the idea that we are an income play or a yield play, while we respect our legacy and where we've come from and we don't want to take that away from our owners, that is not what we are all about.
What we are really trying to do is deliver that CAD0.50 a share dividend on a go-forward basis but deliver above segment, above industry growth at the same time. We believe that we can unlock earnings growth, enterprise value creation through both the multiple and the earnings and create some significant shareholder and enterprise value growth. That's how we are positioning the Company. We've made a dedicated effort to take that story not just to the Canadian investor base and market but also to the US because we know the US, once we grow earnings enterprise value and melt the yield a little bit from the 6% or so that it runs today to something in the 4% or less range, then the US market says, okay, I understand what this thing is all about. It really is a growth story. They are not giving away their dividend.
The great problem that we are talking about here is we do not require much CapEx at all to grow. So we can both grow significantly and feed that with operating expense, SG&A, without having to cut a dividend down to a zero. Now, we had to cut the dividend to make it affordable for the business and managing our balance sheet, etc., but we like where it is right now and we think that's essentially offering an investor, from an investor thesis right now, take some income and it's essentially free option in our strategic growth story. We had somebody at Wall Street mention that to us, that he really looked at it as, hey, I can actually get paid to take a free option? And what you are trying to do here, I like that play and that's what we are trying to deliver.
------------------------------
Kevin Chiang, CIBC World Markets - Analyst [25]
------------------------------
With that, we've run out of time. Thank you Deb and Pat.
------------------------------
Deborah Merril, Just Energy Group, Inc. - Co-CEO [26]
------------------------------
Thank you.
------------------------------
Patrick McCullough, Just Energy Group, Inc. - CFO [27]
------------------------------
Thank you very much.
------------------------------
Definitions
------------------------------
PRELIMINARY TRANSCRIPT: "Preliminary Transcript" indicates that the
Transcript has been published in near real-time by an experienced
professional transcriber. While the Preliminary Transcript is highly
accurate, it has not been edited to ensure the entire transcription
represents a verbatim report of the call.
EDITED TRANSCRIPT: "Edited Transcript" indicates that a team of professional
editors have listened to the event a second time to confirm that the
content of the call has been transcribed accurately and in full.
------------------------------
Disclaimer
------------------------------
Thomson Reuters reserves the right to make changes to documents, content, or other
information on this web site without obligation to notify any person of
such changes.
In the conference calls upon which Event Transcripts are based, companies
may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding a variety
of items. Such forward-looking statements are based upon current
expectations and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ
materially from those stated in any forward-looking statement based on a
number of important factors and risks, which are more specifically
identified in the companies' most recent SEC filings. Although the companies
may indicate and believe that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking
statements are reasonable, any of the assumptions could prove inaccurate or
incorrect and, therefore, there can be no assurance that the results
contemplated in the forward-looking statements will be realized.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN EVENT TRANSCRIPTS IS A TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION
OF THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S CONFERENCE CALL AND WHILE EFFORTS ARE MADE TO
PROVIDE AN ACCURATE TRANSCRIPTION, THERE MAY BE MATERIAL ERRORS, OMISSIONS,
OR INACCURACIES IN THE REPORTING OF THE SUBSTANCE OF THE CONFERENCE CALLS.
IN NO WAY DOES THOMSON REUTERS OR THE APPLICABLE COMPANY ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INVESTMENT OR OTHER
DECISIONS MADE BASED UPON THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS WEB SITE OR IN
ANY EVENT TRANSCRIPT. USERS ARE ADVISED TO REVIEW THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S
CONFERENCE CALL ITSELF AND THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S SEC FILINGS BEFORE
MAKING ANY INVESTMENT OR OTHER DECISIONS.
------------------------------
Copyright 2018 Thomson Reuters. All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------