Centerpoint Energy (market cap $18 billion) has appointed Chris Foster as its new CFO, effective May 5. He replaces Jason Wells, who was promoted to COO in January.

Mr. Foster joins from PG&E, a publicly-traded electric utility company (market cap $32 billion) that serves central and northern California, where he had been CFO since March 2021. He joined PG&E back in 2011. Mr. Wells was the CFO at PG&E before Mr. Foster.

Mr. Foster will receive a base salary of $700,000 and an equity award worth $3.9 million which will vest on his first and second anniversaries of the grant date. He will also receive relocation assistance to move to Houston.

To replace Mr. Foster, PG&E appointed Carolyn Burke as CFO. She has Houston connections, having been the CFO at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company from February 2019 to September 2022. Chevron Phillips is a jointly owned by Chevron and Phillips 66 and has its head office in The Woodlands.  She has been working as consultant to PG&E since January.

For many years, Ms. Burke worked at Dynergy and also had a spell at NRG Energy. She will have a base salary of $725,000, a signing bonus of $400,000 and $400,000 in restricted stock units.

SEC filing – Centerpoint CFO

Quanta Services has promoted CFO Derrick Jensen to Executive VP, Business Operations. The company is the third Houston-area public company this week to promote its CFO, following Halliburton and US Well Services.

Jayshree Desai moves from Chief Corporate Development Officer to CFO. Both changes are effective July, 2022.

Quanta designs, installs, repairs and maintains energy and communications infrastructure. It has revenues of $13 billion and a market capitalization of $17 billion.

Mr. Jansen has been with Quanta since its inception in 1997 and has been the CFO for the last 10 years.

Ms. Desai joined Quanta in January 2020. She was previously the founder of a renewable energy company focused on utility-scale wind, solar and storage development and COO of a electric transmission development company. Prior to that, she was CFO of EDP Renewables North America.

No new compensation arrangements for either executive were disclosed.

SEC filing – Quanta CFO change

NRG Energy has announced that Houston will serve as the company’s sole corporate headquarters. Previously, the company had dual headquarters in Houston (Operations) and Princeton, New Jersey (Corporate).

NRG is an integrated power company that has most of its retail customers in Texas. The dual headquarters arose after NRG bought the retail electricity business of Houston-based Reliant Energy in 2009. It currently has a market capitalization of $8.6 billion.

In January of this year, NRG bought Houston-based Direct Energy from Centrica for $3.6 billion in cash. The company forecast it would achieve $300 million in synergies by 2023 and the corporate office rationalization is part of that plan.

New CFO appointed

NRG also appointed Alberto Fornaro as its new CFO. He replaces Kirkland Andrews who resigned in February to become CFO at Evergy, based in Kansas City.

Mr. Fornaro has a diverse and interesting background. An Italian citizen, he joined Coupang, a Korean e-commerce company in February 2020. However, by December, he had exited that role for reasons unknown. Coupang went on to complete its IPO in March 2021 with a $60 billion valuation (the largest in the US so far this year).

Prior to Coupang, he was CFO for nine years at International Gaming Technology and the CFO of Doosan Infracore Construction Equipment, which is based in Korea. His early career was spent at Fiat and CNH Global, an agricultural equipment business whose majority shareholder is Fiat.

Mr. Fornaro will receive a base salary of $725,000 and a $1 million sign-on bonus (half now, half in June 2022).

Impact of Texas winter storm

NRG also disclosed that the financial impact of Winter Storm URI was $967 million. The main components of this were;

• $393 million from a bilateral hedge in the Direct Energy hedge book with a counterparty that did not perform.
• $95 million due to ERCOT default allocations
• $395 million due to ERCOT’s management of the grid (remember later that week, ERCOT kept the market clearing price at the cap, even though there was 10 gigawatts in reserve)
• customer bad debts of $109 million

In case you were wondering who the winners were from the winter storm, Dallas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer announced a $2.4 billion gain from the event, whilst Kinder Morgan booked a $1 billion gain.

SEC filing – NRG CFO

Jason Wells has been appointed the new CFO of Centerpoint Energy. He replaces Xia Liu, who bolted in May, after less than a year to become the CFO at WEC Energy. Kristie Colvin, the interim CFO, reverts to her previous role of Chief Accounting Officer.

Mr Wells joins from PG&E Corporation, the embattled California utility. He joined PG&E in 2007 and became CFO in January 2016. PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019 and exited in July 2020, with a newly-reconstituted board. 11 of the 14 directors are new. The CEO, Bill Johnson, stepped down on June 30, having been in the role for only 15 months. The company had also announced plans to move its head office from San Francisco to Oakland.

Mr Wells will receive a base salary of $650,000 and a sign-on equity award of restricted stock units worth $1 million, that will fully vest in two years. The company will also buy his residence in San Francisco and pay for relocation expenses.

Centerpoint appointed Dave Lesar, the former Halliburton CEO, as its new CEO on July 1. Under pressure from activist investor, Elliott Management, the company is slimming down to become more of pure-play utility company.

SEC Filing – Centerpoint Wells appointment

Xia Liu, CFO of Centerpoint Energy, has resigned to become the CFO at WEC Energy, a publicly-traded utility company based in Milwaukee. Her resignation from Centerpoint is effective immediately, though she will assist in an advisory capacity until May 1, 2020. She starts her new role at WEC on June 1, 2020

Kristie Colvin, currently the Chief Accounting Officer, has been appointed interim CFO. She has been with Centerpoint and its predecessor companies over the last 30 years.

Ms Liu joined the company in April last year. She was previously the CFO of Georgia Power Company and had spent 20 years in various roles at its parent company, Southern Co. She had a base salary of $550,000. Her new role at WEC will pay her $710,000 in base salary. Ms Liu will also receive a one-time bonus of $100,000 and a one-time restricted stock award worth $400,000.

Centerpoint is currently going through a transitional period. In February, CEO Scott Prochazka left with a $7 million cash severance and $8 million in vested stock awards. John Somerhalder, a director since 2016, was appointed interim CFO. A permanent CFO will not be named until after the appointment of a permanent CEO to replace Mr Somerhalder.

SEC filing – Centerpoint CFO resigns