from the Jan. 12th update call an interesting exchange from the Jan 12, 2023 update call
Ben Pham
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets Corp. (Canada)
"Okay. Got it. And maybe more broader question next is, I mean, this is for you, Arun, and maybe Darren if you
can step in as Arun. When you took the seat a couple of years ago, you had that 7% to 9% EPS CAGR and you
at best pointed to maybe $1 per share in a few years, if you were to go back and that's quite a dramatic change
as we sit here today, $0.60 for 2023. And if you go back with maybe a bit more of a crystal ball, what could you
have done to protect your balance sheet or earnings per share trajectory if you were to go back in time?
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Arun Banskota
President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. A
Sure. Look, Ben, the vast majority of our business continues to perform well and as per our expectations. But, as
we outlined earlier, there are some challenges we are facing that are both macroeconomic, but also within the
company as well, including things – like we said on the regulatory side of the business, it's growing well, but
challenges with the stay-out delay on New York Water, the delay on Kentucky Power acquisition, and on the
renewable energy side, I mean, again, that business continues to grow as well. It is lumpy.
And in 2023, for example, and there are a number of megawatts coming online, but we did sell down 80% of Blue
Hill. On top of that, there's things like interest rates we talked about. But the vast majority of the business
continues to do well. So it's really in light of all of these macroeconomic challenges and perhaps even things like,
what's going on in ERCOT with the Generic Transmission Constraint, which we believe will be resolved in 2024
onwards. So we've gone through those. And really all of the actions we're taking today, Ben, is try to make sure
that we are successful in a high cost or low cost interest rate environment in a easy access or a challenging
access to the capital market environment. So all of these steps are taken to continue to be able to provide
shareholder value over the long-term."