Prepared Remarks of Edison International CEO and CFO
Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Earnings Teleconference
February 23, 2023, 1:30 p.m. (PT)
Pedro Pizarro, President and Chief Executive Officer, Edison International
I am pleased to report that Edison International’s core EPS for 2022 was $4.63, which was in the upper end of our initial guidance range. Today, we are introducing 2023 EPS guidance of $4.55 to $4.85 and reinforcing our strong confidence in delivering our long-term EPS growth target of 5 to 7% from 2021 through 2025. Maria will discuss our financial performance and outlook.
Let’s start with our key accomplishments in 2022, noted on page 3. First, we once again delivered on our annual EPS guidance. Second, SCE continued to make tremendous progress in reducing wildfire risk and PSPS. SCE successfully executed its wildfire mitigation plan and updated the key statistic shown on page 5: SCE now estimates it has reduced the probability of losses from catastrophic wildfires by 75 to 80% compared to pre-2018 levels, and critically with much lower reliance on PSPS — now only 15% — as hardening and other mitigations continue, as depicted on page 6. Despite this strong operational and financial performance, market sentiment impacted our total shareholder return. Our TSR for 2022 trailed that of the Philadelphia Utility Sector Index and most of our peers. As shareholders ourselves, our leadership team and I are deeply committed to achieving our financial targets while strengthening SCE’s ability to deliver safe, reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean electricity.
Diving deeper into SCE’s tremendous progress in wildfire mitigation, despite challenging weather conditions and some fires in our service area last year, 2022 marks the fourth consecutive year without a catastrophic wildfire associated with SCE’s infrastructure. Key achievements in 2022 included deploying about 1,400 circuit miles of covered conductor, bringing total installations to around 4,400 circuit miles. To put this in perspective, this is nearly the round-trip distance from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. I am extremely proud of SCE’s ongoing execution of grid hardening activities, which have made our communities safer. The