CACI International Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 8, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NRG Energy, Inc. 2nd Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone.

Operator

You would then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Kevin Cole, Head of Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to NRG Energy's Q2 2024 Earnings Call. This morning's call will be 45 minutes in length and is being broadcast live over the phone and via webcast, which can be located in the Investors section of our website at www dotnrg.com under Presentations and Webcasts. Please note that today's discussion may contain forward looking statements, which are based upon assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Actual results may differ materially.

Speaker 1

We urge everyone to review the safe harbor in today's presentation as well as the risk factors in our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of future events, except as required by law. In addition, we will refer to both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's presentation. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Larry Cohen, NRG's Chairman and CEO.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in NRG. I'm joined this morning by Bruce Chung, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have members of the management team on the call and they are all available to answer questions. 1st, I just want to express how excited I am to be leading NRG as Chairman, President and CEO.

Speaker 2

I'm grateful for the outpouring of support I've received from the investment community, employees and other stakeholders over the last 9 months and again in the last week following the Board's announcement of August 1. We are laser focused on delivering exceptional shareholder value by meeting the growing and evolving needs of our customers, while returning 1,000,000,000 of dollars in capital. We believe we have the right strategy and the best team to fix the depressed valuation of our company once and for all. Let's begin with NRG's strategic positioning. For those new to NRG, we have the largest energy and smart home platform in North America.

Speaker 2

We're the trusted partner to over 8,000,000 residential customers offering tailored energy and smart home solutions. We are also the 2nd largest energy and energy services provider as well as the largest natural gas provider to commercial and industrial companies. If there's been one takeaway from today's discussion that you should have is that our business and financial outlook has never been stronger. We are witnessing a structural long term tightening in power supply and demand driving a step change improvement in fundamentals. Customers across our platform are using more of our products and increasingly requesting premium customized experiences, as well as innovative offerings focused on convenience, sustainability and cost.

Speaker 2

Our integrated platform enables us to stabilize and increase our near term earnings while capturing medium to long term growth opportunities. We generate significant excess cash well beyond our current business needs, resulting in the financial flexibility to grow earnings, while at the same time returning substantial capital to our shareholders and maintaining a strong balance sheet. The strength of our business and financial outlook has positioned us to capitalize on what we believe to be the beginning stages of an exceptional time for our industry and an exciting time for our company. I have never been more excited about the opportunities in front of us than I am today. Let's dive into the key messages on Slide 5.

Speaker 2

Our business performance exceeded expectations in the Q2 year to date. We are reaffirming our financial guidance ranges and trending toward the upper end of that guidance range. Next, electrification trends compounded by GenAI data center and other large load growth continue to materialize. We expect competitive markets such as ours to realize outsized benefits from this trend, driven by business friendly policies, available resources, and the ability to site projects quickly. Additionally, we have made progress on the strategic priorities discussed in our last earnings call.

Speaker 2

This includes submitting our brownfield development projects to the Texas Energy Fund and continuing to advance with our portfolio of sites. Finally, we continue to fulfill our capital allocation commitments with our share repurchase program underway and line of sight to achieving our balance sheet targets. Turning to Slide 6, we delivered $935,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA in the 2nd quarter, a 14% year on year increase. This brings year to date adjusted EBITDA to 1.78 $4,000,000,000 up 22% from last year. Following this strong first half, we are reaffirming our financial guidance ranges and again trending toward the upper part of that range.

Speaker 2

All of our businesses are excelling and demonstrating strong performance across the board. Our consumer segments demonstrated strong year on year growth. Home Energy subscribers increased by 8% at stable margins. Smart Home had a 5% increase in subscribers and 7% growth in revenue and delivered industry leading retention rates expanded margins. We continue to make substantial progress toward our virtual power plant offering and look forward to sharing more about that by the time of our Q3 earnings call.

Speaker 2

On the supply side, we continue to experience significant improvements in the availability and reliability of our generation assets, thanks to the investments we have made in them in recent years. We are well prepared for the summer and winter seasons across our fleet after successfully completing our spring maintenance outages. This level of preparedness helps ensure we can meet demand and consistently deliver exceptional service to our customers. A shout out to our incredible team of plant operators as our assets delivered 97% reliability during Hurricane Barrel in July with no storm induced or caused outages or lost generation. I'm also happy to report that our cost and growth synergies are on track.

Speaker 2

Today, we're reaffirming our plan of $550,000,000 in synergies by the end of 2025 and we remain on track to achieve our 15% to 20% free cash flow before growth per share growth target, even as our rising stock price means repurchasing shares at higher prices, much higher prices than projected a year ago. On share repurchases, we've completed $176,000,000 of the current buyback program with $649,000,000 to be completed over the balance of the year. Lastly, we are announcing the sale of Airtron HVAC, which will result in $400,000,000 in net cash proceeds. Turning to Slide 7, I'd like to provide you a little additional context on the strong demand outlook we are seeing in Texas. In the first half of the year, Texas experienced over 3% weather normalized load growth, setting new record peaks in January, April May.

Speaker 2

Looking ahead, ERCOT continues to anticipate substantial load growth in the coming years. ERCOT's latest projection indicates that more than 60 gigawatts of growth through 2,030 will take place, driven by onshoring data centers and other large load customers. Notably, many of these new loads are backed by contracts with the transmission and distribution utilities in ERCOT or have been confirmed by an officer of a TDU adding credibility to the projected growth. Within our own portfolio, we continue to advance our 1.5 gigawatts of brownfield natural gas development in Texas. We filed applications for all three projects with the Texas Energy Fund in June.

Speaker 2

We anticipate the PUCT will announce later this month, which projects are advancing to the due diligence phase, which is expected to last 4 to 8 months depending on the quality of the projects and their applications. Following that, loan agreements will be executed. We believe our projects are well situated for a timely approval given their shovel ready nature and the completeness of the applications that we submitted. Finally, we received numerous questions about our site portfolio since our Q1 call. Our singularly devoted development team is diligently working maximize the value of these sites.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, our portfolio includes 21 sites encompassing 21,000 acres of land in competitive markets. These sites are ideally suited for new large loads and power plant development offering co location opportunities both behind and in front of the meter. To identify the sites best suited for data centers, key factors include access to water for cooling, premium fiber channel access for low latency and existing grid access and infrastructure for rapid market entry. As you can see, our sites possess these attributes, but also have potential for other large load applications. In this appendix, we provide several paths to value under consideration.

Speaker 2

I look forward to discussing this more with you as we progress. With that, let me turn it over to Bruce Chung for the financial review. Bruce?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Larry. Turning to Slide 9, NRG delivered another strong quarter of financial and operational performance with adjusted EBITDA of $935,000,000 an increase of $116,000,000 over the prior year. Free cash flow before growth was $663,000,000 exceeding prior year results by $238,000,000 Each segment of our business performed well with much of the performance underscored by positive momentum and growing subscriber counts, increased volumes and margin expansion. Starting with our results in our East West Services Other segments, we saw strong performance producing $282,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA, a $184,000,000 increase over the prior year. $132,000,000 of the year over year increase came from the East segment, where an increase in subscriber counts and lower realized retail supply costs were the primary drivers of performance.

Speaker 3

The remainder of the year over year growth was driven by a decrease in realized power supply costs in the West. Adjusted EBITDA in Texas for the Q2 was $452,000,000 a slight decline compared to prior year. Texas performance was driven by favorable hedging activity along with increased volumes and subscriber counts in the region. This favorability was offset by an estimated $40,000,000 due to the impact of last year's STP and Gregory asset sales, as well as $50,000,000 in higher maintenance costs from the extended plant outage program we deployed in the quarter to ensure our plants are well positioned for this summer's operations and beyond. This marks our 3rd year of enhanced preventative investment to improve reliability and flexibility across our fleet.

Speaker 3

Our plants have performed well through the year and we expect them to continue to do so as the summer rolls on. Our SmartHome business has continued to execute well, growing subscriber count by 5% and service margins by 4% year over year and generating $201,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. While that represents a slight decrease from the prior year, it is important to point out the decrease was primarily driven by an expected increase in the amortization of fulfillment expenses, which began impacting EBITDA after we closed on the acquisition of the business. Absent this non cash impact and other non recurring adjustments, adjusted EBITDA for the segment would have shown an increase of 6% year over year. Key performance indicators for the Smart Home segment continue to remain strong as the average Smart Home subscriber interacts with their systems more than 16 times per day and we see this high level of engagement carry through to our best in class retention which is nearly 90%.

Speaker 3

Our free cash flow before growth came in at $663,000,000 $238,000,000 higher than the prior year and driven by our significant growth in adjusted EBITDA and favorable working capital. We are reaffirming our 2024 guidance of $3,300,000,000 to $3,550,000,000 for adjusted EBITDA and $1,825,000,000 to $2,075,000,000 for free cash flow before growth. Our strong year to date performance coupled with the investments we have made in our plants give us confidence that we are trending towards the upper end of guidance. We continue to see growth and momentum in our business platforms and the continued execution of our diversified supply strategy positions us well through the remainder of the year. Turning to Slide 10 for a current view of our 2024 capital allocation.

Speaker 3

As you can see, there have been few changes since our Q1 call. We are on track to deliver on nearly $600,000,000 of liability management initiatives and $1,200,000,000 in return of capital through share repurchases and the common dividend. As I mentioned last time, the strength of our share price performance has made our convertible notes one of the most expensive pieces of paper in our capital structure and we subsequently see the opportunity to mitigate that through strategic repurchases as part of our liability management program. We repurchased $343,000,000 or approximately 60% of the original issuance. For the remainder of these notes, we have fully hedged the premium we will pay when the notes are retired.

Speaker 3

Turning briefly to share repurchases. We have completed $176,000,000 of the $825,000,000 share repurchase target for 2024 via open market repurchases bringing us to over 40% of our total $2,700,000,000 authorization. We see tremendous value in buying our shares and we'll continue to take advantage of our currently depressed stock price through share repurchases. The only substantial change to our capital available for allocation relates to the sale of our Airtron HVAC business for $500,000,000 which will yield approximately $400,000,000 of net proceeds. We expect the transaction to close before the end of the year.

Speaker 3

Finally, we now show $441,000,000 of unallocated capital available for allocation in 2024 after taking into account the incremental $400,000,000 of net proceeds from the Airtron transaction. We will evaluate the use of this unallocated capital as we move into the latter part of the year and after closing of the Airtron sale. With that, I will turn it back to you, Larry. Thank you, Bruce.

Speaker 2

On Slide 12, I'd like to share a few closing thoughts on our 2024 priorities and expectations. During the quarter, we've made significant progress on our strategic initiatives and I'm confident we have the right platform and strategy to deliver on our commitments to both our customers and our shareholders. As CEO, I'm deeply committed to driving NRG forward to create significant additional shareholder value. We are seeing a long term step change improvement in fundamentals across our platform. You can expect a continued heightened focus on operational excellence, prudent growth, and being good stewards of you, our investors' capital.

Speaker 2

I have never been more excited about the potential of our company than I am today. Thank you for your time and continued interest in NRG. Operator, we're now ready to open the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. Our first question comes from Shahriar Pourreza from Guggenheim. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. Good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Shar.

Speaker 4

Good morning. Larry, I know since we last spoke, we've seen something like 40 to 60 gigs get in line for the energy fund. Do you think the state could do a second fund if this one helps meet the demand? Do you think this means the curves could revert to backwardation? And could you get involved with more generation assuming the expanded program next year?

Speaker 4

So do you have more bandwidth? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Is that one question, Shah, or 3? But they're all great questions. And look, as this state has talked about, I think you probably saw the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor talk about adding a second tranche to the TEP. And I think we'll then see what happens and what the availability is. I think the bigger question, Shar, is first of all, how much of these are real?

Speaker 2

And we don't know yet. We know that ours are shovel ready. But if you look at people who applied for transmission studies and the like, it's an awful lot less than 40 gig. I think it's about 12 to be exact. And so there's a long way to go before a lot of those projects become real and ready to go.

Speaker 2

Some of them I'm sure will, but many will not. So I don't see the curve while in short term we've seen some fluctuation in curves, I don't see what we've seen from the TEF filings to have a major impact on what the term market is going to look like. I'm sorry, there's a second half to your question, Sharan, I think.

Speaker 4

Just assuming like you see an expanded program, do you guys have like kind of bandwidth to do additional generation?

Speaker 2

Absolutely, we do. Our customers and clients continue to need it and it's optimal for our portfolio strategy. Though remember as we've talked about before the lead times for development primarily because of turbines and other equipment is several years. So if you don't have a place in the turbine queue today, there's no way you're getting a new project online before 2,030 at the earliest.

Speaker 4

Got it. Perfect. And then just lastly, Larry, just on transitioning to EPS. I mean, I know I asked you this on the last call, but has your thoughts evolved around just maybe changing disclosures and guidance a little bit?

Speaker 2

My thoughts have evolved. I'll let Bruce expand on how my thoughts have evolved.

Speaker 3

Sure. I guess, in short, Larry's thoughts have evolved such that there hasn't been no change in terms of what we're thinking about. I think what we had indicated last

Speaker 1

time is that we are

Speaker 3

working towards making that transition. We see our

Speaker 2

towards.

Speaker 4

Okay. That's perfect color. Thanks. And Larry, big congrats. I know a couple of quarters ago I highlighted that we didn't want you to leave and just stay as the CEO.

Speaker 4

So we're glad the Board listened. Thanks guys.

Speaker 2

Well, sure. When the thing is taken off like a rocket ship, you want to wait till you get to the stars before you get off.

Speaker 5

That's right. Congrats, guys.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Shahriar.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Angie Storozynski from Seaport. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thank you. So maybe, I mean, we're all trying to be as excited as you are, Larry, about the prospect of power markets. I mean, clearly, the curves disagree. And I'm just wondering if you can explain to us why do you think we've had this sharp pullback in Texas power curves given the load out outlook you see and we see?

Speaker 2

Sure. Good morning, Angie. I'm going to let Rob kind of take you through that because it's something we talk about a lot. But Rob maybe?

Speaker 1

Yes. So Angie, obviously, we've seen the same moves and curves that you have. You know as well as I do that to start with the long term curve gets impacted by the noise of whatever is going on in the front end of the market. We've had a warm, but not very pricey summer and that's kind of impacted things out the curve. What I would tell you is as we look at these curves, regardless of whether or not you see a bunch of demand come into ERCOT or not, the back end of the curve actually looks like a place where we would be buyers, right?

Speaker 1

So 20 7 20 8 summers look cheap. The market itself is constructive or would be constructive and we think these are the right levels for us to step in because we think they're undervaluing what the curve looks like and that's before you add demand. So I'm pretty bullish on what the market looks like. We feel very strongly about where our portfolio is and we think that our retail business will continue to churn out the earnings that it's done over time. So I'm not very concerned about that.

Speaker 6

Speaking about retail business, if you could talk to us about what's happening in New England, Any potential reviews to the retail electric market and how that could impact your business?

Speaker 7

Good morning, Angie. This is Rishi. To put in the context of what's happening in the Northeast, our retail business overall performed really they were very strong quarter, right, 8% subscriber growth, double digit growth in volume and strong margin performance. In the Northeast, there are a couple of things going on that we watch very carefully. The regulatory environment and some of the changes in the specific states.

Speaker 7

As an example, Massachusetts ended up not making any changes. In Maryland, where we have seen some changes as a result of the SD-one, that's a very, very small part of our overall earnings stream. And so the impact of that will be negligible to our results. But we watch that the environment very closely.

Speaker 6

Okay. And then back to the generation assets. So I mean this whole discussion about new build and the need to actually supply additional generation capacity. I'm just wondering, I mean, those are assets with 4 year lives and you guys are making decisions based on 2 to 3 year visibility into the possibility of these assets. So one is how you approach the new build given that previous cycles were very painful for IPPs.

Speaker 6

And 2, I mean, is there a way to basically maybe pursue new build through long term contracts as opposed to a truly merchant newbuild? I mean, if the demand is truly there, I mean, one could argue that the demand should be comfortable with signing PPAs to support new build as opposed to just truly merchant assets, both actually in ERCOT and PJM?

Speaker 2

Angie, I'm going to let Rob expand on that. But remember that we have the ability to contract and use all of the power from this isn't a merchant build for us. We have the ability to cross it to ourselves or use it utilize it ourselves. And so we're not doing speculative merchant build. That's not the business that we're in.

Speaker 2

This is part of the supply stack that Rob and team are really crucially putting together to meet all of our customers' needs going forward. But I don't know Rob, do you want to?

Speaker 1

Larry covered it. This is for our portfolio. Like these assets were designed, built and planned to support the retail portfolio regardless of what we see kind of long term. We have a long term consumer facing business and we support that.

Speaker 6

And nothing about potential long term contracts. I'm clearly fishing for some comments about those brownfield sites if the monetization of those could come through new build backed by PPAs?

Speaker 1

So Angie, as we consider the sites and the strategy that we do with the sites, right, so as we've disclosed before, 2 thirds of those at least are up in PJM, where we don't play with generation quite as much as we do down in Texas. All of the answers that Larry and I just gave were in reference to the 3 new build projects that are on the way. When I think about the sites themselves, if we have an opportunity to build generation on one of those sites and it's for a customer, then we obviously will be thinking about PPAs and different structures to support the capital for those.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Sure. Thanks, Angie.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Antoine Oraman from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Hope you're doing well. Congrats on the results. Thank you. And Larry, congrats on the permanent appointment.

Speaker 5

I guess on that note, just more broadly taking a step back, how do you think about the just the strategic trajectory of the company under your new leadership, right? So again, over the past year, energy to deemphasize physical generation, asset light strategy, Do you think that's still the best positioning in the current market conditions and any other strategic shifts we should be considering?

Speaker 2

I mean, Antoine, I think our strategy isn't changing, but I don't I've never really liked the description asset light. I've always considered it to be supply optimal. I mean, a good mix of our own generation and other instruments or tolls in order to be able to do that and that's continuing. One of the reasons we would like to have more iron than we did a year or 2 ago is because our customers and clients are demanding more electricity. And so as we construct the appropriate supply portfolio or supply stack up as in we optimize that having more hard metal in the ground is a good thing for us.

Speaker 2

And so we're doing that, but we're also going to have more of the other types of the growth in power demand is continuing and we need to be in a position to meet our clients' needs to do that.

Speaker 5

Yes. That makes sense. And then I guess on the data center opportunity, could you maybe comment on status of any discussions you may have with data center providers, type of contracts that you may be contemplating, advance your in negotiation process and how should we think about sort of timeline potential announcements?

Speaker 2

Look, Antoine, one of the things we did is we were getting so many inbounds that we just kind of pulled back for a strategic review of it all. As you can see the kinds of things we're contemplating on that slide in the appendix, is it 2018 or? 21. 21, sorry. And I think as we land on a strategy, we're obviously going to share that with you and I'm sure that'll be sometime probably before the end of the year.

Speaker 2

But we were getting lots of people sort of throwing us bids for our sites and we're like, well, we know they think we're just a bunch of power guys who don't know anything about data centers. So if that's what they're bidding us, we really need to look at this because it means there's a lot more value in there than the bids that we're receiving. So can't really comment too much more on it now, but look forward to sharing more with you as we have it.

Speaker 5

Fair enough. And then lastly, on the $400,000,000 of net proceeds from HVAC divestiture, I guess, somewhat unexpected. Where do you expect to allocate that extra cash? I'm sorry.

Speaker 3

Can you just repeat that last part, Antoine? Where did

Speaker 2

you say to allocate? Yes.

Speaker 3

Yes. So look, yes, we'll from an allocation standpoint, we'll certainly provide more visibility around the allocation once we close and we get the proceeds in place, but you should expect that we'll remain consistent with our capital allocation principles.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Thank you so much guys. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Steve Fleishman from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hey, good morning and congrats, Larry.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. Good morning. Yes.

Speaker 8

So just a couple of kind of near term questions. First, the how should we think about if we do end up having a kind of a milder lower price summer in Texas? You've done a lot to kind of make sure you are ready for a high priced hot summer, just protection from the opposite. And I assume that's kind of embedded in sync to the upper end, but just how should we think about that?

Speaker 1

Hey, Steve, it's Rob. We don't talk about it often, but we also do manage to the downside. The great thing about our portfolio is that we have those assets that we can turn down in markets that aren't constructive, like you've seen for the last two quarters. As far as the way we look forward into the year, we contemplate both up and down scenarios, and where we feel we're going to land on guidance.

Speaker 8

Okay. And then also just kind of more we had this PGM auction outcome. Just how should we think about that capacity price flow through the retail business? I don't know how much you've already contracted or it's just not enough of a scale to matter much?

Speaker 1

Yes. So the BRA print for this last auction is indicative of kind of the supply demand structure that we kind of see across the country. So it's going to provide additional dollars towards generation. We don't have a very large portfolio in PJM. So it is what it is.

Speaker 1

On the C and I and retail sides, think about our consumer business is very short term, so don't expect a lot of impact there. And then on the C and I side, we contract with these guys. And depending on what changes in the markets, we can use change in law depending on what happens if we chose. But as we look at the impacts to the book on the retail side, it's de minimis state. It's nothing that I would even talk about.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you. And then just sorry to go back to Texas new build, but so obviously the TF has the low cost loans and performance bonuses and the like. But then you do have to kind of have a market price for return on equity. So just I mean is your messaging that basically, hey, this works for us at any forward curve?

Speaker 8

And just how should we think about kind of protecting equity?

Speaker 2

I know you don't mean any forward curves.

Speaker 8

I don't, but I'm just it is I'm just trying to understand the thought process

Speaker 2

on. We actually believe that a depressed curve was reality that would Chris served from here was reality that would obviously impact our decision. But as Rob discussed earlier, what we're really seeing in terms of increased demand is somewhat belies the short term blip in the curve. But we look at that all the time. And there are there is a place where we wouldn't do the project.

Speaker 2

I don't think we're not there today.

Speaker 1

Steve, the one thing I would add to the math or as you think about like the value of these assets, flexible gas generation is a function of both our price, but it's also a function of volatility, right? And so the volatility curves, which are not very transparent, you can't see them by looking into Megawatt daily, Those are still up. And so the value of these projects as something that can move around with our load continues to support us developing them and putting them into the portfolio.

Speaker 8

Got it. That's helpful. And then one last quick one just on the Q3 disclosures. You've talked about the earnings and VPPs. Just the site, the 21 sites, do you think we'll get some update on the kind of the Q3 call or is that more kind of late year or next year, Like what timeline

Speaker 2

on that? We're pushing to do that, but it's a slow and iterative process a bit, Steve. So I'm sure we'll have some updates. It may not be as complete a one as you all would like. That may have to wait till the Q1 of next year or some conference in between.

Speaker 2

But we are working expeditiously, but it's more important that we get it right than do it fast.

Speaker 8

Understood. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Steve.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Neil Colton from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hi, guys. Just a quick question on the economic outlook. How do you think about so we've seen a softening in the consumer side. Like how do you think about the impacts to your business thinking both the home security business, retail energy as well? Are you seeing any evidence that the consumer is stepping back, weakness, etcetera?

Speaker 7

Hey, Neil. This is Rishi. Good morning. We delivered a really strong quarter with 5% year over year subscriber growth, 7% revenue growth for the Smart Home business. And that sort of think of that is that's in an environment where we have high interest rates and a slowdown in housing activity.

Speaker 7

As that normalizes, we would expect that to potentially deliver a tailwind to the business. And I think it's largely a function of the fact that we've got a business that has a very high quality customer base with an average FICO score of greater than 700. And so you saw, we posted near all time record results for retention, customer retention, which is almost at 90% on an annualized basis. And we've still largely in an underpenetrated market. And so we see opportunities to not only continue to grow the customer base at the mid single digit rate, but also grow the number of devices and services we provide to the customer within the home.

Speaker 7

And so we feel really good about our position and with a potential for a tailwind if rates normalize and housing activity picks up.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thank you. Very helpful.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our last question. Our last question comes from Dheeraj Chopra from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Larry, congrats. I've got 2 questions. Sure thing. Two questions.

Speaker 9

First, just for housekeeping, August 29, will we get a list of projects? Will that be formally announced? Or how will we know which ones kind of made it to the 2nd round of due diligence by the PUCT?

Speaker 3

Hey, this is Chris. Yes, what we've been led to believe is that the PUCT will have either an order or a draft order, which would list the assets, the projects that are moving forward towards due diligence. And that has been targeted for the August 29 meeting.

Speaker 9

Okay, perfect. Thank you. And then just lay back to you, as you take the permanent role, obviously, there was this transaction announced here. Are there other non core assets that we could potentially see being liquidated for cash proceeds back into the core portion of the company? How are you thinking through that?

Speaker 2

Look, I mean, we always look to optimize everything we own. I guess, there's nothing on the horizon that I see that would be divestible. But sometimes people walk in the door with very attractive offers for things that we own and we would be silly not take a look at those especially given we have a broad and amazing range of opportunities number 1 in which to invest capital. And number 2, we have a very undervalued stock in which to invest capital as well. So when we look at those two things that we can make a transaction that makes sense, we'll obviously do that.

Speaker 2

I don't see anything on the horizon today, but if the opportunity arises, we will certainly look at it hard and try to take advantage of it.

Speaker 9

Understood. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have one last question. The last question comes from David Arcaro from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, thanks so much. The last, last question here. Hey, I was just curious on the PJM market, just reflecting on the capacity print that we just saw. Is there an opportunity for you to look at newbuild there? Like does newbuild economics work at this point?

Speaker 10

And do you have any opportunities to look at that market in terms of power plant expansion?

Speaker 1

Hey, it's Rob. So the print is constructive as it comes to actually highlighting the supply demand picture in the market. So I think that's a positive. We have new build sites, which regardless or we have sites. Regardless if you new build them or not, that print is definitely supportive in the overall value as we think about them from a development perspective, whether that's for load or for generation.

Speaker 1

The one thing I would tell you, David, is that one print isn't going to get a bunch of generation running into the market. So I wouldn't expect to see a whole bunch of people applying to build generation based on 1 PJM print, but we do have another mark in December, which I expect would be supportive. And so the supply dynamics in PJM aren't going to improve anytime soon. But I believe that ultimately competitive energy players are rational and will build when it makes sense.

Speaker 10

That's helpful. Thanks. And just maybe on expanding on that a little bit, do you have a sense as to when new gas plants could realistically get built in the PJM market, given the supply chain challenges that you mentioned and your outlook for energy prices too in the context of

Speaker 1

that? So there's 2 challenges in PJM. One is PJM specific and that's the interconnection queue, right. It's very deep and very slow and so it's probably frustrating a lot of people. The second piece is the one that is a global issue, which Larry alluded to earlier, which is if you want to build a power plant today and you're not in the queue, you're not going to get anything on the ground before 2,030.

Speaker 1

So demand is coming faster than that supply window. So I expect tight markets both from a capacity and an energy perspective over the next several years.

Speaker 10

Okay, great. Very helpful. Thanks for the color and congratulations Larry.

Speaker 2

Thank you, David. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I will turn it back over to Larry Colvin for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you all for being on the call and for your interest in NRG and on a more personal note for all the kind words and congratulations on my appointment. I'm here and we're all here because we are super excited about the future of NRG. I think you all know that I've been here for 20 years and I've never been more excited or more optimistic about the prospects. So I hope you'll stick with us and join us as we continue to execute well and take advantage of the amazing strategic opportunities and initiatives in front of us. Thank you all very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program.

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Earnings Conference Call
CACI International Q2 2024
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