Operator:
Our last question is from Sophie Karp with Keybanc Capital Markets.
Sophie Karp:
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Other questions about Texas and other pressing issues have been answered. I just wanted to ask you about kind of organizational morale. It seems like you guys are very focused on the O&M reductions and perhaps you’re asking a lot of people within the organizations to do things differently. And I was just kind of wondering if you could comment on the overall morale within the organization, how much of a buy-in is there from employees on all levels and how you’re handling this. Thank you.
Dave Lesar:
Yeah. I mean, obviously, this is a biased view and a personal view but I think morale is really, really great in CenterPoint right now. And I think if you – you’ve got to look back over what this organization has gone through in the last 12 months.
And it’s been a wrenching change. I’m the third CEO within a year. Jason is the third CFO within a year. We had issues around dividend. We had the activist investor in us. We had COVID. We had a hurricane that skirted us last summer. And I would say that I think people are really bought into the new CenterPoint.
And certainly, in my engagement with – and I think I can speak more broadly for our executive team – their people are motivated. They like what’s happening. They did not like what happened early last year. And so, I think they see a really happening company, a management team that is taking the organization in the right way. They’re excited about it. They understand that everybody has a part to play.
And I think the other thing is a focus on O&M isn’t always a focus on people reduction. As Tom has said, it’s a focus on doing things better. It’s getting your vendors to participate with you in doing things more efficiently, buying things cheaper and that kind of thing.
So, I think at the end of the day, morale is really, really good here, and I expect it to even get better.
Forward-Looking Statements
This document contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this document are forward-looking statements made in good faith by CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (“CenterPoint Energy” or the “Company”) and are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements concerning CenterPoint Energy’s expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future operations, events, financial position, earnings and guidance, growth, impact of COVID-19 and the February 2021 winter storm event on our business and service territories, costs, prospects, capital investments or performance or underlying assumptions and other statements that are not historical facts. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. You can generally identify our forward-looking statements by the words “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “goal,” “intend,” “may,” “objective,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “projection,” “should,” “target,” “will,” or other similar words. The absence of these words, however, does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking.
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