Fitch Rates PG&E's $800 Million Notes 'A-' Rating Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has assigned an 'A-' rating to Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E) $800 million issuance of senior unsecured notes. The PG&E notes are being issued in two tranches comprised of $300 million of 10-year and $500 million of 30-year senior notes. The Rating Outlook is Stable.

The effect of unrecoverable costs and fines related to the San Bruno accident on PCG and PG&E's financials; The ability of management to regain the confidence of its core constituencies in the wake of the San Bruno pipeline disaster;

Future regulatory proceedings including PG&E's 2014 general rate case (GRC) and 2015 gas transmission and storage (GT&S) rate case. Read more.

P&G reports; Lafley doesn't

The CEO skips the quarterly earnings call. Does it make a difference?

There was only one thing missing from Procter & Gamble's (PG) first-quarter fiscal 2014 earnings call on Friday morning: The CEO and chairman of the company, A.G. Lafley. That was no surprise, as P&G had announced, earlier in the week, that Lafley would no longer be participating in quarterly earnings calls as the company tries to get off the hamster wheel of meeting or missing quarterly expectations. Still, it was unusual to hear only the CFO, Jon Moeller, during the Q&A: Analysts and journalists alike typically use this period as a way in which to evaluate -- fairly or not -- the energy and morale of the company through the proxy of its leader's voice.

It was hard to do that with Moeller, although, as a longtime pro and steady hand, he did his job of providing the numbers quite well. P&G -- which also has stopped providing quarterly guidance, following the lead of competitor Unilever (UL), which stopped years ago -- reaffirmed its full-year plans and posted organic sales up 4% and net sales up 2%, to $21.2 billion, roughly in line with expectations. Read more.

 

Procter & Gamble, General Mills And Frito Lay Transition To Natural Gas Fleets

Nancy Getter, the Associate Director of Global Logistics at Procter & Gamble (P&G); Doug Watne, Director of North American Transportation at General Mills, Erik Neandross, a clean energy consultant for Frito-Lay, and Dave Warren, the President of Dart Transit Company, all spoke on a panel at CSCMP a few weeks ago about using natural gas trucks for a larger portion of their shipments.

P&G has 800,000 annual shipments over 8,000 lanes in North America. They have a small dedicated fleet; mostly they work with carriers. Their goal is to have 20 percent of their shipments provided by compressed natural gas (CNG) equipment by June of 2013. They work with 80 carriers in North America, 11 of those carriers run some part of the fleet with natural gas trucks. They are signing one to two year contracts for one way deliveries (no back hauls) with carriers that have natural gas equipment. Read more.