Otter Tail (NASDAQ:OTTR) reported third-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Otter Tail Corporation reported third-quarter diluted earnings per share of $1.41, down from $1.86 last year, primarily due to a decrease in the Plastics segment performance.
The company is affirming its adjusted diluted EPS guidance midpoint of $5.88, narrowing the range, and maintaining a five-year rate base growth expectation of 10%.
Strategic initiatives include advancing renewable generation and transmission investments, despite facing challenges in project development and execution. The company modified its requested net revenue increase in the ongoing Minnesota rate case and is progressing with its 15-year integrated resource plan, with feedback suggesting more renewable generation and battery storage.
Manufacturing and Plastics segments faced higher production costs and a softening housing market, but the company leveraged added manufacturing capacity to offset headwinds.
Otter Tail Power remains positioned to support large loads and is engaged with potential new clients, while maintaining low electric rates relative to national averages.
The company has a strong balance sheet, with 61% equity layer and over $600 million in available liquidity, supporting its growth plan without needing to access equity markets.
Management anticipates segment earnings to normalize by 2028, with long-term EPS growth targets set at 7% to 9% annually, aiming for a total shareholder return of 10% to 12%.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Conference call: after today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference call over to Beth Eichen. Please go ahead.
Beth Eichen (Manager of Investor Relations)
Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Beth Eichen and I’m Otter Tail Corporation’s Manager of Investor Relations. Last night we announced our Q3 financial results. Our complete earnings release and slides accompanying this call are available on our website at ottertail.com. A recording of this call will be available on our website later today. With me on the call today are Chuck McFarland, Otter Tail Corporation CEO, Tim Rogelstad, Otter Tail Corporation’s President, and Tyler Nelson, Otter Tail Corporation’s Vice President and CFO.
Before we begin, I want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements during the course of this call. As noted on slide 2, these statements represent our current views and expectations of future events. They are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ from those presented here, so please be advised against placing undue reliance on any of these statements. Our forward-looking statements are described in more detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review.
Otter Tail Corporation disclaims any duty to update or revise our forward-looking statements due to new information, future events, developments or otherwise. We will be referencing certain adjusted financial measures, or non-GAAP measures, throughout this call including adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, and adjusted return on equity. For more information, please refer to our quarterly earnings release and the non-GAAP reconciliations included in the appendix of our presentation.
I will now turn the call over to Otter Tail Corporation CEO, Mr. Chuck McFarland.
Chuck McFarland (Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Beth. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Please refer to slide 4. As I begin my remarks with a summary of our quarterly highlights, our team delivered on our strategic growth plan and near-term priorities during the third quarter. Despite navigating a challenging operating environment, Otter Tail Power continues to perform well, executing on our regulatory priorities and robust rate base growth plan, all while navigating a heavy workload.
Our ongoing Minnesota rate case is progressing and our team is working toward reaching a constructive outcome. We also advanced our renewable generation and transmission capital investments during the quarter. Despite facing an increasingly complex environment to develop and construct large infrastructure projects, our team remains focused on continuing our long history of strong project execution for the benefit of our customers and shareholders.
Our Manufacturing and Plastics segment team members faced dynamic market conditions during the quarter, including higher production costs and a softening new housing market. Despite this, our team continued to execute on their customer-first strategy and effectively leveraged the added manufacturing capacity in Arizona and Georgia, helping to offset the negative impact of the headwinds faced. Slide 5 provides a summary of our financial results. We produced diluted earnings per share of $1.41 in the third quarter compared to $1.86 last year. This expected decrease was primarily driven by Plastics segment performance as the average sale price of our PVC pipe continued to recede. We are affirming the midpoint of our adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance range of $5.88 and are narrowing the range. Following my operational update, Tyler will provide a detailed discussion of our quarterly financial results and the outlook for the remainder of the year.
Transitioning now to my operational update for Otter Tail Power, beginning on slide 7: during the third quarter we submitted our SIR rebuttal testimony and the ALJ hearing was conducted on our ongoing Minnesota rate case. In the filing, we modified our requested net revenue increase to $38.7 million from $42.3 million. The modification was largely driven by a jurisdictional allocation adjustment. Our team continues to work towards reaching a constructive outcome in the case.
Separately, we continue to evaluate if a rate case filing is warranted in any of our other jurisdictions. Turning to slide 8, our 15-year integrated resource plan filed with the Minnesota Commission is also progressing. We responded to information requests throughout the third quarter and initial comments from our intervenors were filed in mid-October. In the Minnesota Department of Commerce’s initial comments, they recommended additional renewable generation beyond what we had included in our request and suggested battery storage as an alternative to natural gas.
Our reply comments are due in December. Turning to slide 9, we are reaffirming our 5-year rate base compounded annual growth rate of 10% and continue to expect Otter Tail Power’s earnings to grow at a similar rate over the planning period. We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our growth plan and are focused on strong project execution. As a reminder, our plan is not dependent on securing any large loads, and any such load remains an incremental opportunity for us.
Slides 10 and 11 provide an overview of our ongoing and future capital projects. Our two solar projects are under construction and remain on schedule and on budget. We anticipate Solway Solar becoming operational in the first half of 2027 and Abercrombie Solar in the last half of 2028. Our battery storage project is under development and we expect to bring this facility online in 2028. Development work is also continuing on our large regional transmission projects.
We are facing increased challenges developing and constructing certain transmission projects. These challenges could pose a risk to our original timelines for some of the large regional transmission projects included in our five-year capital spending plan. Our team continues to proactively engage with landowners, community members, local units of government and others to articulate the reliability-related benefits these projects would bring to the region.
Turning to slide 12, Otter Tail Power remains well positioned to attract and support large loads. We are engaging with a diverse set of companies interested in adding new loads to our system. We view the diversity of our pipeline as a strength as each load has different needs. For example, the clean fuel and thermal storage opportunities are interruptible, giving us flexibility while still providing an opportunity for significant growth. Providing low-cost electric service to our customers has been and always will be a priority of ours. As slide 13 illustrates, Otter Tail Power’s electric rates have remained well below the national and regional average for many years, and we remain committed to managing customer bill increases and helping our customers identify ways to save.
Transitioning to our Manufacturing platform, slide 15 provides an overview of the industry conditions impacting Manufacturing segment volumes. Industry conditions are improving in many of the end markets we serve and we are encouraged by the increased demand. Our team members remain focused on delivering on our strategy of providing value-added service to our customers and being our customers’ partner of choice. The recreational vehicle, lawn and garden, and horticulture end markets remain stable.
The construction end market continues to improve as our world-class OEM customers are seeing an increase in demand for their products. The industrial end market remains strong as the products manufactured are used to support the growing energy demand. Agriculture industries continue to remain challenging; however, we are starting to see a slight improvement looking out to next year from current levels. Slide 16 provides an overview of our Plastics segment pricing and volume trends. The average sale price of our PVC pipe continued to decline during the third quarter, decreasing 9% from the same time last year. Sales volumes decreased 5%. This decline was largely due to our customers advancing their purchases of our PVC pipe in response to announced resin price increases earlier this year and the impact of a softening housing market. However, our team continues to effectively leverage the large-diameter capability added at our Phoenix facility, which has helped to partially offset the year-over-year decrease in volumes.
Despite the more subdued housing market, we are seeing an opportunity from increased demand for water infrastructure, including PVC pipes, stemming from data centers and the construction of other large manufacturing facilities. PVC resin and other input material costs have increased 10% from the same time last year, primarily due to global PVC resin supply and demand dynamics. With that, I will turn it over to Tyler to provide his financial update.
Tyler Nelson (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks, Chuck, and good morning everyone. Turning to slide 18, we produced diluted earnings per share of $1.41 during the third quarter compared to $1.86 last year. This expected decline in earnings was primarily from our Plastics segment as we continue on the glide path to earnings levels more in line with our long-term expectations. Please follow along on slides 19 and 20 as I provide an overview of our third quarter results by segment. Electric segment earnings were flat year over year. Our financial results were positively impacted by the timely recovery of our rate base investments, net of the incremental depreciation and financing costs. We also benefited from higher electric rates in both Minnesota and South Dakota as well as the favorable impact of weather. As expected, these items were largely offset by higher operating and maintenance costs driven by increased labor, vegetation management, and plant outage-related costs.
As we anticipated, our operating costs were higher in the third quarter of 2026 than the same period last year primarily due to timing differences in spend between periods. Through the first nine months of 2026, Electric segment earnings are up 14% compared to the same time last year. Manufacturing segment earnings decreased $0.03 per share this quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower gross profit margins driven by higher production costs and lower productivity from the onboarding of new employees. General and administrative expenses were also higher during the quarter compared to the same time last year. Partially offsetting these items were higher sales volumes as industry conditions in many end markets we serve are improving and our team has been successful in capturing new business with our existing customer base.
Overall, we are not satisfied with our quarterly segment financial results as the growth in the business was offset by cost and productivity-related pressures, but our management team is focused on improving productivity and managing costs in the business. Despite the challenges in the third quarter, segment earnings are up 28% on a year-to-date basis compared to last year. Turning to slide 20, Plastics segment earnings decreased $0.34 per share. The expected decline in earnings was primarily driven by lower PVC pipe pricing as the average sales price of our PVC pipe continues to recede. As expected, sales volumes decreased during the quarter driven by our customers advancing their purchases earlier this year in response to announced PVC resin price increases. In addition, a softening housing market also contributed to lower sales volumes in the quarter.
Material costs were higher during the quarter due to global supply and demand dynamics, leading to compressed margins. Lastly, segment financial results were negatively impacted by a one-time adjustment for estimated vendor rebates and the timing of recognizing such rebates as a cost of inventory or as a benefit to earnings. Corporate costs increased $0.08 per share primarily due to lower income tax benefits recognized during the quarter and lower investment income resulting from a decrease in short-term investment balances. While our corporate costs increased compared to the same time last year, our quarterly results were better than we expected.
Turning to slide 21, we continue to be in a position of financial strength. Our equity layer as a percentage of total capital was 61% as of the end of September and we had over $600 million of available liquidity, including over $250 million of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. Our balance sheet continues to position us well to efficiently fund our current rate base growth plan, providing benefits for our customers and shareholders through support for customer affordability and avoided shareholder dilution.
On slide 22, we are affirming the midpoint of our adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance and narrowing the range to $5.73 to $6.03 from $5.68 to $6.08. As a reminder, this range excludes the after-tax impact of the legal settlement expense recognized in the second quarter. While maintaining the midpoint of our adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance, we did modestly adjust the midpoint of our Plastics and Corporate guidance ranges. The revised midpoint of our adjusted Plastics guidance reflects the softening demand environment as mortgage rates remain elevated and developed lot inventory increases, putting downward pressure on new home construction. In addition, the one-time adjustment for vendor rebates I previously discussed also impacts our annual earnings expectations. We increased the midpoint of our Corporate cost center largely due to better-than-expected third quarter results.
As we look to close out the year, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our 2026 financial objectives. On slide 23, we are reaffirming our five-year capital investment plan with Otter Tail Power’s portion totaling $1.9 billion. While maintaining the base plan, we did increase our incremental investment opportunity for the current planning period from $750 million to $850 million. This increase is largely driven by the upsizing of a potential wind project investment opportunity from 200 megawatts to 300 megawatts.
We anticipate providing a revised five-year capital spending plan during our year-end earnings call in February of next year. Slide 24 summarizes our financing plan, which remains unchanged. We continue to anticipate retiring and not replacing our only outstanding parent-level debt by the end of the year. And given our strong balance sheet and cash generation of our Manufacturing platform businesses, we continue to expect to fund our customer-focused growth plan without needing to access the equity capital markets.
On slide 25, we are reaffirming our expected long-term Plastics earnings profile. We believe segment earnings will continue to decline through the end of 2027 and expect earnings in 2028 to be within a range of $45 to $50 million. Due to seasonality and other factors, the rate of pricing decline can vary from period to period, and the timing or level of earnings could vary materially from our projection. Our Plastics segment continues to be an important component to our overall strategy even as earnings continue to recede.
We expect the segment to continue to produce an accretive return and incremental cash that we can use to reinvest into our utility-first model. Slide 26 summarizes our financial objectives. Our long-term earnings per share growth rate target is 7% to 9%, which results in a total shareholder return target of 10% to 12%. We anticipate delivering on these targets once Plastics segment earnings normalize in 2028. As we continue to execute on our customer-focused growth plan, we are well positioned to deliver on our financial objectives over the long term. Otter Tail Power continues to be a best-in-class utility, producing attractive returns for our shareholders while providing some of the lowest-cost electric service in the nation and region.
Our Manufacturing and plastic pipe businesses continuously produce accretive returns and incremental cash, enabling us to efficiently fund our five-year capital spending plan. It is this intentional strategic diversification that has and will continue to provide benefits to our customers and investors over the long term. We are now ready to take your questions.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Tate Sullivan (Analyst)
Hi. Thank you. Hi, good day. Chuck, you mentioned some risk to the transmission projects in the five-year plan. First, can you talk about what some of the longer timeline might be due to for those projects?
Tim Rogelstad (Vice President, Asset Management)
Sure. This is Tim, and I’ll take that question, and maybe just a little bit of background. You know, we’ve had a long history over the last 15 to 20 years of developing transmission and executing transmission projects, and we’re just seeing more complexity and more difficulty in siting. And while we’re very confident in the projects that we have, the need for them and things along those lines, it’s just, you know, fundamentally as we’re addressing local concerns and things like that, there could be some delays.
Now we aren’t in a position at this point to say that, you know, we’re going to adjust our five-year plan or anything like that, but we anticipate that, you know, when we report our year-end earnings that we’ll have an update at that point in time. But overall we still remain confident, but we’re just in a more difficult environment right now.
Tate Sullivan (Analyst)
Thank you. And that was—you answered my second question on that topic about the transmission capex plan, I mean going up, meaning currently planning to go up double in 2027. But follow up on the year end on shifting to PVC and the slide where you traditionally point out the price and sales prices, volumes and material input costs, I mean can you comment—usually and going back to historical presentations, when the input costs will increase, that will sometimes usually translate to higher sales prices as well.
Was there a different dynamic this quarter or going into the future quarters that we should consider, please?
Tyler Nelson (Chief Financial Officer)
This is Tyler. I can answer your question. So we did see some pricing strength during the quarter. You can see on the slide that you referenced, our average price was down about 9% compared to the same quarter last year. That’s a slower rate of decline than we’ve seen over the last number of quarters. Certainly that could be driven by an increase in the resin cost. Plus, as we talked about in our prior quarter call, we did see elevated demand in the second quarter from our customers and that provided support for pricing strength on our part.
Tate Sullivan (Analyst)
Is it a different consideration with selling more larger-diameter pipe from the expanded facility, or is that not a consideration for that?
Tyler Nelson (Chief Financial Officer)
No, that doesn’t have a material impact, I would say, as we think about resin costs and how that impacts our pricing profile.
Tate Sullivan (Analyst)
Okay, thank you very much.
OPERATOR
We have reached the end of the Q and A session. I will now turn the call back over to Chuck McFarland for closing remarks.
Chuck McFarland (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you for joining our call and your interest in Otter Tail Corporation. If you have any questions, please reach out to our investor relations team. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter and seeing many of you at the EEI Financial Conference.
OPERATOR
This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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