CenterPoint Energy 2004 Annual Report Download - page 8

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With the proceeds from the first step in the sale of
Texas Genco, we were able to reduce our company’s
indebtedness by $2 billion in 2004. This year, by combining
the proceeds from the second step in the sale of our
interest in the power generation subsidiary along with
the sale of approximately $1.8 billion in low-cost transition
bonds, we will be in position to further reduce our
company’s debt. These low-cost bonds cover most of
the transition costs that were approved by the PUC in
our true-up case.
Unfortunately, several parties have appealed the financing
order authorizing the bond sale, which will delay our recovery
of these costs for a number of months. We will, however,
continue to earn interest on the approved amount during
the consideration of these appeals.
The sale of our power generation subsidiary and the
transition bonds are not, however, the only ways we are
working to improve our company. Through our One
Company, Get it Right and Grow strategic initiatives, we
are taking important steps to make our company more
efficient, cost effective and profitable.
2004: a solid year for core electric, gas and
pipeline operations
Even as our senior management team focused much
attention in 2004 on the sale of Texas Genco and our true-up
case, employees in our core electric, gas and pipeline
operations turned in their best performance in our brief
history as CenterPoint Energy.
In Houston, our electric transmission and distribution
operations continued to show overall improvement. We
increased our core operating income by $33 million over
2003, added nearly 47,000 new metered customers and met
system reliability goals after establishing an aggressive
special program to cut outage times.
Our natural gas delivery and gas marketing operations also
had their best year, raising operating income by $20
million. Spurred by strong growth in the metropolitan
areas of Houston and Minneapolis, we added about 45,000
customers. We also achieved high customer satisfaction
scores. Our gas marketing business increased sales to
electric and gas utilities as well as to large commercial and
industrial customers.
LETTER TO SHAREHOLDERS