Eversource 2013 Annual Report Download - page 4

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Chairman’s Message
Dear Shareholder,
In 2013, Northeast Utilities once again delivered on
its promises to shareholders and customers. It has
been a year of tremendous progress for our integrated
company, the foundation of which has been fiscal
discipline, excellent operational performance and a
customer-centric focus. We remain a strong company,
one that consistently provides the high quality service
our customers demand and the solid return on
investment our shareholders have come to expect.
In 2013, Northeast Utilities earned $2.53 per share, an
increase of 11 percent over 2012 on a recurring basis.
We also raised our common dividend 7.1 percent to an
annualized rate of $1.47 per share, which when coupled
with our share price appreciation from $39.08 to
$42.39, provided our shareholders with a total return of
12.3 percent in 2013. This is our fifth consecutive year
of double-digit returns for shareholders. And another
dividend increase in February 2014, to an annualized
level of $1.57 per share, marked our fifteenth dividend
increase over the past fourteen years.
The company also maintained its strong A- credit
rating at Standard & Poor’s, one of the industry’s top
ratings. In January 2014, Moody’s raised most of our
senior credit ratings further into the “A” category.
These strong ratings help us lower our debt costs,
saving millions of dollars annually for customers and
shareholders.
This solid financial performance was the direct result
of three critical factors: a management team dedicated
to implementing best practice standardization and cost
efficiency; an all-employee commitment to operational
performance targets; and our continued focus on
improving the regional transmission infrastructure.
2
We accomplished a number of merger integration
initiatives across the company in 2013, all designed
to enhance customer service, create efficiency and
reduce costs. With the power of One Company we will
continue to standardize across all of our operating
companies from top to bottom – inventory items, how
we configure and operate our system, the equipment
we use, and automation and technology. For example,
we had 48 different types of poles in our utilities.
Today we have only six types. Also, our new outage
management system will look and operate the same
across our entire electric distribution system. And
we are just beginning to optimize our service centers,
which will greatly benefit our customers. We’ll
continue to make Northeast Utilities more efficient and
more customer-focused, and by doing so we expect to
dramatically improve our customer service.
Operationally, Northeast Utilities met or exceeded
our targets for our distribution, transmission and
generation systems. In fact, 2013 stood as our best
year of service reliability on record. This performance
was achieved through employees’ steadfast
commitment to meet performance targets, as well
as vigilant system maintenance and improvements
such as system hardening and enhanced vegetation
management around our power lines.