Edison International on Tuesday reported lower third-quarter 2019 income for itself and subsidiary Southern California Edison, taking hits from increased costs for fighting wildfires linked to its power lines.
Company-wide net income came in at $471 million, $1.36 per share, dropping from $513 million, $1.57 per share, in the same quarter of 2018. However, adjusted core earnings rose on a year-over-year basis from $510 million, $1.56 per share, to $519 million, $1.50 per share.
At Southern California Edison, earnings per share (EPS) dipped by $0.19 in third-quarter 2019 to $0.03 core EPS and $0.16 non-core EPS.
In a press release, Edison attributed the drop at SCE to higher number of shares outstanding following an equity offering in July and increased wildfire mitigation expenses. Those expenses were partly balanced by decisions in state and federal rate cases used in setting user fees.
The reduction in non-core earnings per share was driven by amortization of the utility’s financial support for California’s wildfire insurance fund.
Southern California Edison this week accepted that its power equipment was the probable cause of the 2018 Woolsey Fire that resulted in three deaths and destruction of about 1,600 structures, CNN reported. A company transmission line was also in the vicinity of the origination point for the Easy Fire this week, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
The utility made its first contribution to the wildfire fund, $2.4 billion, in September. It will provide about $95 million annually each Jan. 1 for a decade, Edison President and CEO Pedro Pizarro said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.
In its 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Edison affirmed plans for major decommissioning starting next year of SCE’s retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The California Coastal Commission earlier this month issued the last permit needed for the work to begin.
Decommissioning is scheduled for completion by 2028, but could be “subject to any legal challenges that may be raised by interested parties,” the 10-Q says. The advocacy group Public Watchdogs in September filed a federal lawsuit seeking a halt to decommissioning and the on-site transfer of used fuel from two SONGS reactors from cooling pools into dry storage. It focused on a series of problems with the fuel offload managed by contractor Holtex International, including an August 2018 incident in which one canister was at risk of an 18-foot drop for nearly an hour while being lowered into its storage slot.
That incident stopped the fuel transfer for nearly a year, to July, and drew a $116,000 fine from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Southern California Edison now expects the work to wrap up by late next spring. At that point, about 3.5 million pounds of used fuel assemblies from SONGS’ three now-retired reactors will be in dry storage.
