Mr. Fagan: We're a multi-faceted energy company that is more than 100 years old. The company started with Tampa Electric, the original electric utility serving the Tampa area. Interestingly enough, the company began with a streetcar system in downtown Tampa and since that time, we've grown into an international energy company. If you look at the facets of the company right now, many of them grew directly from the electric company ' in fact, maybe the easiest way to tell our story is to start there. Our largest subsidiary is Tampa Electric, which we still own today. A natural progression from Tampa Electric was the move into other areas of energy, like coal and transportation. We were primarily a coal-based electric utility at that time, so it was a vertical expansion for us to go into the coal business. As a result of that, we have, in addition to Tampa Electric, TECO Coal, a subsidiary based in Kentucky. Originally, the output of the mines served the electric company, but now we serve a vast number of customers ' both on the utility side and on the industrial side. As a matter of fact, Tampa Electric is no longer a significant customer of the coal company, despite the fact that this was the way the relationship started. We also have a transportation company that was used originally for transporting coal down the river on barges and then across the Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans to our facilities, here, in Tampa. Just as we had with the TECO Coal, we have also branched out into other areas. Now, not only do we have a large river barge company which delivers coal south and other products upstream, we also have a transportation shipping business that brings coal across the Gulf, and we've expanded beyond that to include an international fleet, which is actually the largest dry bulk US flag fleet operating today. TECO Transport carries PL40, which is a government aid grain program, around the world to places like Indonesia and St. Petersburg, Russia. This is clearly an international oceangoing fleet. Also in the expansion of our energy industry business, we entered the coalbed methane business. Our TECO Coalbed Methane subsidiary produces natural gas from coal seams in Alabama's Black Warrior Basin. This gives us additional fuel diversity, as we have access to not only coal but to natural gas. A more recent and non traditional expansion was our growth in the state of Florida with the acquisition of Peoples Gas System, the largest LDC in Florida. Peoples Gas serves more than 260,000 customers in all the metropolitan areas in Florida such as Jacksonville, Miami, Tallahassee, Orlando and Tampa. We have expanded that business since we purchased it in 1997, to supply not only those regions, but also customers all the way down Southwest Florida to the rapidly growing Naples area. Our fastest growing business, the one that we've been focusing on more recently, is our independent power business. We've taken advantage of the deregulation of the traditional regulated utility business, which has been transforming itself over almost a 20-year period. The accelerated deregulation over the last 10 years enabled us to expand into markets outside of Florida through TECO Power Services, a generation company that also serves customers in Central America, primarily in Guatemala. In the United States, we have projects now being built that will allow us to serve 18 states outside of Florida, as well as Mexico. The electric company primarily serves the Hillsborough County area, which is the county surrounding Tampa and we have about 570,000 customers in the electric company, making us the third largest investor- owned utility in Florida.
Tickers included in this excerpt: TE
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.