Ralph A. LaRossa
Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer at Public Service Enterprise Group
Thank you, Carlotta. Good morning to everyone and thanks for joining us to review PSEG's 2023 fourth quarter and full year results. For the fourth quarter of 2023, PSEG reported net income of $1.10 per share compared to net income of $1.58 per share in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Non-GAAP operating earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023 were $0.54 per share compared to $0.64 per share in the fourth quarter of 2022. Our non-GAAP results, excluding the items shown in Attachments 8 and 9, which we provided with the earnings release.
For the full year of 2023, PSEG reported net income of $5.13 per share compared to $2.06 per share for the full year of 2022. Our non-GAAP operating earnings of $3.48 per share for the full year came in at the high end of our 2023 guidance range of $3.40 to $3.50 per share and marked the 19th consecutive year that we delivered results meeting or exceeding our guidance.
Our fourth quarter 2023 financial results capped off a solid operating year. Building on these results, you can see on Slide 5 that we also reaffirm PSEG's full year 2024 non-GAAP operating earnings guidance of $3.60 to $3.70 per share, as well as our 5% to 7% earnings CAGR through 2028 and our $18 billion to $21 billion regulated capex plan that supports our rate base CAGR of 6% to 7.5% through 2028.
And rolling forward our five-year capital plan to 2028, we added approximately $3 billion of investments to the prior plan that started from a year-end 2023 rate base of $29 billion. These are all unchanged from our January 2024 investor updates, and we continue to identify potential investment opportunities for future rate base growth.
Dan will discuss our financial results in greater detail following my remarks. So I will focus on a quick look back then on our outlook and objectives for 2024. Since our last earnings call, PSE&G has submitted two important filing to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. In early December, 2023, we filed our $3.1 billion Energy Efficiency II investment program. This significantly expanded offering is driven by an increase in work to achieve the savings targets required under the BPU's updated energy efficiency framework. If approved, this program will launch the state's second energy efficiency cycle beginning in January of 2025 and run through June of 2027, with the investments made over a six-year period.
Our EE II filing aligns with the annual reduction goals of 0.75% for gas and 2% for electric contained in New Jersey's Clean Energy Act of 2018, which are all unchanged and extends through 2027 program year.
In the interim, we continue to conduct our award-winning energy efficiency program, which remains oversubscribed. This last November, we filed for a second extension to this program, totaling approximately $300 million, covering July through year-end 2024 period. As a direct result of these programs, PSE&G is also advancing its Clean Energy Jobs Program, with a focus on lower and middle-income community hiring and training.
Our EE programs continue to create value by lowering customer bills, reducing energy use and emissions, and providing shareholders with the return of and on the energy efficiency spending. New Jersey continues to be a national leader in promoting the broad adoption of EE, and it remains an important tool in helping us reach New Jersey's clean energy goals.
The second regulatory filing we made in December was our first distribution base rate case in nearly six years. This case addresses 57% of our rate base given that the other 43% is regulated under FERC formula rate. You're aware that this filing was required pursuant to the settlement of our second Gas System Modernization Program back in 2018.
The filing proposes an overall revenue increase of 9%, with the typical combined residential electric and gas customers seeing a proposed increase of 12% or less than 2% of compounded growth over the six-year period. We expect a procedural schedule for this rate case to be issued in the near term. And based on previous rate case timelines, we anticipate that this rate case will conclude later in 2024.
The largest item in a rate case is to obtain recovery of our capital expenditures already made to modernize system infrastructure and improve reliability, but not yet in rates, as well as to implement recovery of expenditures for the previously approved AMI and electric vehicle programs.
Besides capital recovery, the rate case proposes several mechanisms to mitigate the impacts of market volatility on customer bills, including insulating customers from swing in interest rates, severe weather events and revenue-related impacts of pension, providing for a more predictable monthly bill. We are also proposing a new time-of-use rates that will allow customers to save on their bills by shifting usage for off-peak periods, a rate option that could benefit all customers, including incentivizing residential customers to charge their electric vehicles during these off-peak hours.
The BPU has added several commissioners in the past year. Governor Murphy recently appointed Michael Bange, a retired water utility executive with operations experience. The new commissioners continue to advance a full agenda, and we already have several data points over the past six months that are consistent with prior results, including two recent rate case settlements that adopted the existing New Jersey return on equity rate of 9.6%.
These agreements between the BPU staff, Rate Counsel other interveners and the utilities demonstrate a continued preference for settlements over adjudicated cases in New Jersey. In 2023, the BPU also approved settlements to extend our GSMP II program for two years to invest $900 million on infrastructure modernization and greenhouse gas reduction, as well as a nine-month extension for $280 million covering our EE I program through June of 2024.
If you followed us for several years, you know that we are also laser focused on cost containment. In 2023, we're able to lock-in four-year labor agreements with all our New Jersey represented employees, which addresses one of our largest O&M costs. This is just one example of our relentless cost discipline, which has positioned our distribution rate case increases to be the lowest in the state over the six years since our last rate case filing back in 2018.
The comparison of our in-state electric and gas distribution rate increases since our last rate case is shown on Slide 12. PSE&G's electric distribution CAGR was less than one-third of the average New Jersey electric CAGR and our gas distribution CAGR was less than half of the average New Jersey gas CAGR.
PSE&G's customer bills continue to compare very well with regional peers for our residential electric and gas service and remain lower from a historical share of wallet basis. Of considerable note was our ability to reduce monthly bills for typical net residential natural gas customers with three commodity reductions during 2023, prior to the 2024 heating season. In addition to this focus on affordability, we continue to provide outstanding reliability.
For the 22nd consecutive year, PSE&G received the ReliabilityOne Award in the Mid-Atlantic Metropolitan Service Area from PA Consulting, an industry benchmarking group. We are very proud to have combined our reputation for reliability and our regionally favorable affordability with nationally-recognized customer satisfaction scores.
PSEG ranked number one for the second consecutive year in the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study in the East among our large utilities. We also secured the top position in the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study in that same region.
Now let's turn to our capital investment programs. During the fourth quarter of 2023, PSE&G invested approximately $1 billion in energy infrastructure and clean energy, bringing the full capital spend to $3.7 billion, our largest-ever single-year expenditure. As I mentioned earlier, PSE&G finished 2023 with a total rate base of approximately $29 billion, which was a 10% increase over year-end 2022 rate base. A key driver of this growth is our energy efficiency program, which continues to experience higher demand for residential and C&I offerings, accounting for close to $480 million of the $3.7 billion.
Our Infrastructure Advancement Program, which is focused on modernizing the last mile of our system, has never been more critical as activity in response to new service request for EV make-ready and additional large specific projects, including datacenters picks up. We also installed and placed into service 1.5 million smart meters through our CEF advanced metering program or AMI. The total AMI program, which is intended to replace more than 2 million meters in total is expected to be completed this year, still on schedule and on-budget.
Now turning to our nuclear operations. The nuclear production tax credit provided in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act began on January 1st of this year and extends through 2032 for the payment of up to $15 a megawatt hour based on nuclear units gross receipts. Our nuclear fleet operated at 93% capacity factor for the full year of 2023, producing approximately 32 terawatt hours of carbon-free baseload energy, which included a Salem 1 breaker-to-breaker run between refuelings.
And wrapping up, I want to note a few other highlights. For the 16th consecutive year, PSEG has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index. And for 2024, PSEG will also be included in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook. U.S. News & World Report also recently named PSEG to its inaugural list of 200 Best Companies to Work For, and in 2023, we were recognized by the CPA-Zicklin Index as a trendsetter for Corporate Political Disclosure Practices and Accountability.
We also completed the sale of our last fossil unit at Hawaii last year, making PSEG Power one of the few carbon-free baseload generating fleets in the country. This fleet is well situated to benefit from potential datacenter growth, hydrogen hubs and license extension with none of the potential upside in our current five-year plan. PSEG continues to execute on a robust set of growth investments aligned with New Jersey's energy policy goals as well as expected growth from increased electrification, including EV adoption, port electrification as well as new business, including data center loads. These last two mentioned were recently recognized by PJM in their January 2024 load forecast report for our PS zone.
We are very pleased with the progress made thus far to increase the predictability of PSEG. An important part of achieving this comes from our ability to execute on our current five-year capital investment plan without the need to issue new equity or sell assets. PSEG has delivered on what we said we would do, and I look forward with confidence in this team's ability to continue to execute on our business plan in the years ahead.
I'd like to close my remarks by thanking all 12,500-plus PSEG employees for their dedication in safety, reliability and our customers.
I'll now turn the call over to Dan to discuss our financial results and outlook in greater detail, and I'll be available for your questions after his remarks.
