Exelon Earnings Call Insights: Growth Strategy and Sizing the Dividend

Exelon Corp (NYSE:EXC) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Growth Strategy

Stephen Byrd – Morgan Stanley: I wanted to go back, Chris, you had a talked a bit about the growth strategy and had sort of discussed the risk tolerance on that. I just wanted to make sure that I had understood clearly that, can you talk just a bit more about as you think about the degree of merchant risk that you’re willing to, to take as you think about using your excess cash flow to grow the business over time and how you assess those versus say more contracted opportunities?

Christopher M. Crane – President and CEO: Yeah, we would at this point, we would be looking at lower certainty in returns. Well, I think we have adequate risk in the portfolio at this point. So, it would be more around contracted assets, renewables that are contracted making investments in that area, the big opportunity that we have is the growing investments we can make in the utilities. So, it would always be about value and how we think it fits in the portfolio. So I would not rule out our merchant opportunity if it was the right opportunity, but that would not be our priority at this point.

Stephen Byrd – Morgan Stanley: Just as a follow-up, Chris maybe just talking more broadly, there’s President Obama had mentioned a carbon regulation effectively recently and I was just curious from – as you all look at a landscape and the potential for carbon regulation, what’s your sense of the landscape or the prospects for carbon regulation over time?