Retail Supplier Parent Expects Load-Serving Business to Underperform in Q1 Due to Extreme Weather, Pricing

NextEra Energy expects its retail and wholesale supply businesses to underperform in the first quarter of 2014 due to the extreme conditions experienced to date.

"[W]e expect first quarter for Energy Resources to be challenged by the difficult market conditions we have seen so far this year in the mid-Atlantic region, caused by extremely cold weather and limitations on natural gas supply. This will likely have a negative impact on any business, including our full requirements portfolio in the northeast, with fixed price load obligations. While some elements of our portfolio have benefited from these conditions, we expect the full requirements business in the northeast to underperform under these extreme conditions," executives said in discussing 2013 earnings yesterday.

While, for the full year 2014, NextEra at this point does not expect the extreme pricing to have a "material" impact on results, "it's clearly going to weigh [] on the first quarter," executives said.

Asked about the customer supply businesses going forward beyond the first quarter, executives said that, "clearly, the dynamics of the business and the pricing of that business are going to change going forward, but we'll have to see. We're certainly not going to change our return expectations for that business, so we would definitely expect to see higher pricing in the future."